The demolition of 105 illegal buildings stood atop water channels on Jalan Layur and Jalan Gurame, Jati Urban Village, Pulogadung Sub-District, East Jakarta, Thursday (9/25), went chaotic because the building owners refused their buildings being demolished and blockaded the officers.

The building owners don’t get compensation money because they have built buildings atop water channels for years

One of those building owners is Sumyani (40), owner of an ornamental fish kiosk. Together with her husband and children, they threw rocks to the officers, attacked them with hammers, and had threatened to stab the heavy equipment operator that was about to tear down the 3x2.5 square meter kiosk.

Luckily, the police officers deployed managed to control the situation and the heavy equipment directly torn down all of the buildings to the ground. Because of the building owners’ resistance, the demolition had been delayed for about 30 minutes.

Head of Jati Urban Village, Dewi Purnamasari, told that the buildings demolished on Jalan Layur are 80 buildings and on Jalan Gurame 25 buildings. As many as 150 joint personnel are deployed from Satpol PP, TNI/police, East Jakarta Water Management Public Works Sub-Department, and local urban village and sub-district apparatuses.

“All of these are illegal buildings, that’s why we torn down. They have been existed since 1990s. Besides kiosks, there are also stores, bike workshops, food stalls, and houses. The building owners don’t get compensation money because they have built buildings atop water channels for years,” she uttered.

Meanwhile, Head of Conservation Section for East Jakarta Water Management Public Works Sub-Department, Bambang Suharyanto, stated that his party will restore the function of those water channels.

“All this time we couldn’t do maintenance work properly because the water channels were blocked by illegal buildings,” he said.