Jakarta – The bill on housing and settlement has continued to draw criticism from civil society groups, including the National Commission on Violence against Women, or Komnas Perempuan, which has pointed out several weaknesses of the bill.

The House of Representatives has changed its schedule several times but the last time the House's Commission V on housing planned to pass the bill into law was this hearing session, which will end before the year-end holiday season.

Komnas Perempuan, through a press release made available Friday, said the bill failed to address the major problems of housing and settlement. It also said the House did not include women in its consultation during the bill's deliberation, which violates Article 14(2) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which says rural women are to be included in development planning.

Previously, NGOs protested articles in the bill that said those occupying land not their own faced imprisonment. Currently, the government evicts squatters but does not criminalize them.

Muhidin Mohamad Said of Commission V said earlier that the legislators had "gone through a long process of deliberation, made visits to regions and consulted experts, academicians, real estate associations and other stakeholders in our consultations."

A coalition of several NGOs, including Komnas Perempuan, Jakarta Settlement Forum or Forkimja, Jakarta Legal Aid and several urban planners like Darrundono and Gunawan Tanuwidjaja, have criticized the bill, saying it was not pro-poor but more pro-market.

Among the contentious articles is "every person is prohibited from providing facilities and drafting identity papers for residents or owners of a house built outside of areas designated for housing." Violation of the article and several others in the same vein is punishable by a maximum of one year's imprisonment and a Rp 50 million fine, the bill says.

The coalition said the bill mostly focused on technical aspects of housing, making the bill appear like a guideline for developers.

The bill also does not acknowledge housing built above water. Antonio Ismael, an urban development consultant, said in an email to The Jakarta Post that climate change and land subsidence could inundate many parts of cities in Indonesia, thus making building houses over water necessary.

"Why don't the lawmakers draw up specific criteria for people building settlements over water, like the criteria for land settlements," he said.

Several communities have built houses near the sea, above water like Bontang Kuala community in East Kalimantan and various fishermen communities live on riverbanks and in coastal areas like along the Kapuas River in West Kalimantan or the northern coast of Jakarta.

Last month, several Commission V lawmakers made a trip to see housing in Moscow, Russia, saying it was necessary to help them deliberate the housing bill. However, the bill deliberation finished in November.