Pluit Dam Eviction Planned This Month

The city administration plans to evict 8,000 families living on the banks of Pluit Dam, North Jakarta, by the end of this month, an official says.

"The executor is the municipality of North Jakarta. They are still dispersing the information to the squatters," Wisnu Subagya Yusuf, head of the public works agency, said over the weekend.

He said the city administration had allocated Rp 7.5 billion (US$714,000) to pay the squatters' compensation and Rp 4.5 billion to clear the area.

"The squatters with Jakarta identity cards will be prioritized as recipients of the compensation. They will also be allocated to low-cost apartments in Muara Angke, Kapuk and Marunda in North Jakarta," he said.

Pluit Dam is 80 hectares in size and can hem in some 80 million cubic meters of water. But the squatters had reduced its capacity by dumping garbage into the dam, Wisnu said. The Jakarta Post