Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – The government's city clean-up programme has put thousands of street vendors, beggars, becak drivers and traffic wardens out of work, and left many of them homeless.

The Jakarta administration wanted to get rid of people and activities which it felt were clogging its streets and export its poverty to other cities or the countryside, said Ms Wardah Hafidz from the Urban Poor Consortium.

But she said the scheme had caused at least 80,000 of Jakarta's poorest people, who had become becak drivers or hawkers in the wake of the Asian economic crisis, to become unemployed. "Jakarta wants to beautify Jakarta and wants to free Jakarta from the poor because they say they are a liability."

Becak drivers and food vendors here said they have been sent back to their hometowns or the countryside with a warning not to return. Ridding the city of the poor would allow its administration to attract more investors and in turn, have more revenue to run itself under the new decentralisation law, Ms Wardah said.

Local government officials have frequently conducted violent raids on the informal workers and vendors, who must have government permission to ply their trades. Following a series of such raids, the Jakarta Becak Association launched a class action lawsuit against Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso.

Cities such as Cirebon in West Java are already feeling the effects of the crackdown, as becak drivers flood in. Sociologists have warned of an ensuing public unrest. "The limited job opportunities will be like a time bomb unless we all manage to overcome them soon," said Mr Abdullah Ali of the Islamic Studies Institute, who found there were three becak drivers for every becak in Cirebon.

Parliamentarians have criticised the violent clean-up programme and say they will use their power over regional governments to protest against it.

The Jakarta administration had also forcibly evicted several hundred fisherman it claimed were living on its land, as well as at least one thousand people living under railway bridges in the city. Mr Riwuh, a 45-year-old fisherman who claimed the land he used to live on was allocated to the fishing community 35 years ago, had his shanty destroyed earlier this month by two truckloads of police and thugs who arrived in the middle of the night with bulldozers.