Poverty Funds to Be Used to Surface Slum Roads

October 06, 2011

The Jakarta Public Works Office will spend Rp 20 billion ($2.2 million) on a poverty alleviation program, with most of the money going toward surfacing dirt roads in the capital’s slums.

“Each branch of the public works office will have funds to upgrade roads in shanty towns in their areas with asphalt surfacing,” Ery Basworo, the head of the city public works office, said on Thursday.

“It must be completed this year because we wish to help reduce the number of slum areas.”

The project is currently at the tendering stage and work is expected to be carried out in November and December.

Bambang Suyitno of the city’s Spatial Planning Office said people could contact the public works office for details about which roads would be surfaced.

While road surfacing will no doubt be welcomed by residents of Jakarta’s slum areas, city officials did not explain how the program would substantially improve the economic situation of its residents.

Data from the city’s social affairs agency say there are 7,315 street children in Jakarta, while the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) estimates that this year there were 363,000 people in the capital surviving on no more than Rp 355,000 per month.

There are few programs designed to deal with the city’s root causes of poverty. Kian Kelana, head of the Jakarta Social Affairs Agency, said more than 2,000 beggars, buskers and street children were detained before Ramadan this year.

They were released a month later, she said, after undergoing “skills training.”

According to some city councilors, one-off programs like detaining beggars and paving roads amount to little more than urban whitewashing and do little to help slum dwellers out of poverty.

(x the JG)

( Just one more area where some if not most of that money will go into the pot=holes, never to be seen again! siK's musings)