Jakarta – Hundreds of angry pedicab drivers set fire Tuesday to two Jakarta city council vehicles during an attempt to get them off the streets of the Indonesian capital, witnesses said.

The two pickup trucks were torched during an attempt by city officials to remove the pedicabs from main streets in the central Roxy and Karanganyar areas, one witness told AFP.

The officials had come armed with batons but fled when angry mobs tried to encircle them. The mobs vented their anger by setting the trucks on fire. The pedicab drivers then rode towards a shopping mall in West Jakarta. No one was reported hurt.

On Monday some 74 "becak" (pedicab) drivers formed a union with the support of a non-governmental organisation known as the Urban Poor Consortium to fight attempts to evict them from most parts of the city.

The pedicabs were phased out in 1988 on the grounds that they were inhumane for the drivers and worsened traffic congestion, the Post said. In 1998, at the height of the economic crisis, the Jakarta governor authorised their return on humanitarian grounds. He revoked his decision a day later following protests from the city council but many drivers ignored the ban, the newspaper reported.

City officials cracking down on the pedicabs said 78 had been seized recently and destroyed while the drivers had been released. They said 95 percent of drivers were not Jakarta residents.