Dofa Fasila – The Jakarta administration will focus on boarding houses, or kost, when it begins a series of raids against unregistered newcomers to the capital later this month, Governor Fauzi Bowo said on Sunday.
The administration has given newcomers, who typically flood the city in the days after Idul Fitri, until Sept. 21 to register with their local population office for residency documents.
"For those who stay within the deadline, the [raids] will not prove to be a problem," Fauzi said. "You are welcome to apply for Jakarta residency. I want to stress that the purpose of the raids is only to ensure order in the city."
He added that once the grace period ended, officials in each of the city's five municipalities would begin a series of raids, known as OYK, to weed out unregistered residents.
The governor said their main focus would be kost, where newcomers to the city without any relatives here tend to stay when they first arrive. Other places high on the OYK list are apartment buildings and upscale housing estates.
Fauzi said all those found without the required paperwork would be sent back to their hometowns, adding that he hoped the OYK program would contribute to a drop in the city's population. He did not say, however, how his administration planned to send undocumented newcomers back.
Purba Hutapea, the head of the provincial population office, said the option of sending people back would only apply to those found without any ID and "living on the street, in parks or other public places."
The rest of the newcomers netted in the OYK raids, he said, will be issued a citation to appear at a petty crimes court. Purba added there would be a total of 500 officers, or 100 in each municipality, taking part in the raids.
He said that those who intended to use the grace period to apply for Jakarta residency would have to submit a transfer of domicile letter from the authorities in their hometown, their ID card and proof of a place to stay and a job in Jakarta. Each application is expected to take two weeks at the most to process.
Fauzi said that new arrivals to Jakarta were in general coming here prepared with the necessary documents.
"We appreciate the fact that nowadays a lot of the people in other regions who wish to live in Jakarta are coming here with all the documents needed to apply for residency," he said. "There's a greater understanding of the rules now, unlike in the past."
In addition to this, greater development in the regions has contributed to a slowdown in the number of people moving to the capital, Fauzi said.
He attributed this to efforts by the central government to distribute development funding more equitably, and said that if the trend continued, the level of urbanization in Jakarta could eventually be rolled back and brought under control.