Imaging about Jakarta and its people, the first thing comes to my mind is that it is like light attracts fireflies to mob around it. The glamorous of capital city invites many people of this country to pursue their dream about job, career, popularity, wealth, welfare, and etc., or in a simple term, a better life. They believe that Jakarta provides almost all the things that money can buy. For the last five decades Jakarta has been changing dramatically compared with any other city in Indonesia. We could see that there are more numbers of skyscraper crowd such as business and trade centers, shopping malls, hotels, condominiums and apartments, or even public facilities like schools and hospitals were build in Jakarta. This rapid growth of development is happened because of the agglomeration of our money circulation in this metropolitan area, since Jakarta is being the center of business and economic activities in Indonesia. Unfortunately, the glamorous and attractive figure of Jakarta seems to decoy those people from its gloomy side about the cruelty and complexity of life in the jungle of civilization.
Like many big cities in developing countries, Jakarta suffers from major urbanization problems. The population in this 720km2 province area has risen sharply from 1.2 million in 1960 to 8.5 million in 2008, counting only its legal residents. Jakarta currently is the twelfth of most populous city in the world. Together into Jabodetabek, the number of population in the 5100km2 area is estimated at 23 million. It makes this urban area become sixth largest metropolitan in the world.
The major problem that government of DKI Jakarta has been failing to solve until now is about how to feed and give proper life to these 23 million of people who earn for their living in such a small area. According to the data of DKI Statistic Central Board, the number of open unemployment in August 2008 is recorded at 580.510 people, or for about 12% of 4.77 million estimated total work forces in DKI Jakarta. This very high number of unemployment, lack of work field, and mass retirement in industrial sector; poverty; and sharp gap between the rich and poor in this modern urban area are the most factors that generate such a high number of criminality and many problems that creates unsecured feeling in Jakarta.
To handle criminality and problems that creates unsecured feeling in society, Governments of DKI Jakarta have important duty in monitoring and controlling their territories. In Jakarta, we can’t deny that security institutions (governor and province government, police, and army) have responsibility in managing daily matter and development of the province area, as well as residents who take part nearly in formal way. But, in all fact of delinquency and right violation in the city, there are some persons who are honored, feared, and also have big influence on people in their domain. They are nongovernmental persons or groups who illegally take control of various activities, places, and humans in public space. In Indonesia, we called them preman. There is no specific term in English to represent word preman. The closest term maybe bandit or gangster.
The term preman comes from Netherlands word vrijman which means free man or people who don’t want to tie up with rules, but now this term has pejorative connotation. There is a tendency to explain the meaning of word preman as criminal, but sometime if we consider their function in city environment; it’s more complex to give the exact meaning for these bandits. They may address to bad persons whose job are asking money from others by providing services that don’t actually needed, but sometimes they are also needed by some private sectors and government institutions. In fact, our regulator has ambivalent relationship with them. In Jakarta, these bandits have taken part in the vague of city control power. Their knowledge about underground world, criminality in its sector (activity and space) has placed them in the middle of cases solving, like policeman. Basically, they are one of the most important actors in the hidden environment of the city. In the middle of grey area, they are sneaking and set in the space that abandoned by government.
Every jungle has its own tiger; this popular proverb represents the situation of big city like Jakarta which is in every public space there are persons who illegally take control and create unsecured feeling for others. There are various kinds of bandits in Jakarta. The first type is common bandits which consist from persons who take control of crossroad and ask money from drivers who walk trough, until persons who have close relationship with state official like market bandits, debt collectors, hired killers, and every kind of criminals, include recidivists. The second type is certain bandit networks which are organized and controls specific territories like mafia. They are, for example the controller of bars, night clubs, illegal casinos, and prostitution areas whose structure and power also organized for political control, to serve the government.
The existence of third parties who scrambled for control of informal area in almost of all public domain in Jakarta is the proof of DKI Jakarta governments’ fiasco in arranging and controlling their territories into secure area that give comfort and safety for their people. This problem has become more and more complex and harder to solve since the local security institutions tend to cooperate with these bandits in mechanism of sharing earning
Although at the end of 2008, police department tried hard to fight against power abuse by the bandits, it seems that they were not serious in solving this problem. Road criminals like thieves, pick-pockets, extorters, snatchers, and robbers were caught by policeman; hawkers, street musicians, and beggar were driven away from public space such as bus and train stations like Senen, Blok M, and Kota. For several time, we felt a little bit secure when we walked in that area. But that was not guaranteed that those annoying persons will not come back again to disturb and make Jakartans feel restless. Furthermore, there are still organized bandit networks that collaborate with government in handling the control of illegal business. I think these all matter are back to the willingness and commitment of governments to put aside their own personal ambition and fight against all kind of criminality, to serve and give better life for their people. We all hope about this.
source: Jerome Tadie, 2009, Wilayah Kekerasan di Jakarta
Like many big cities in developing countries, Jakarta suffers from major urbanization problems. The population in this 720km2 province area has risen sharply from 1.2 million in 1960 to 8.5 million in 2008, counting only its legal residents. Jakarta currently is the twelfth of most populous city in the world. Together into Jabodetabek, the number of population in the 5100km2 area is estimated at 23 million. It makes this urban area become sixth largest metropolitan in the world.
The major problem that government of DKI Jakarta has been failing to solve until now is about how to feed and give proper life to these 23 million of people who earn for their living in such a small area. According to the data of DKI Statistic Central Board, the number of open unemployment in August 2008 is recorded at 580.510 people, or for about 12% of 4.77 million estimated total work forces in DKI Jakarta. This very high number of unemployment, lack of work field, and mass retirement in industrial sector; poverty; and sharp gap between the rich and poor in this modern urban area are the most factors that generate such a high number of criminality and many problems that creates unsecured feeling in Jakarta.
To handle criminality and problems that creates unsecured feeling in society, Governments of DKI Jakarta have important duty in monitoring and controlling their territories. In Jakarta, we can’t deny that security institutions (governor and province government, police, and army) have responsibility in managing daily matter and development of the province area, as well as residents who take part nearly in formal way. But, in all fact of delinquency and right violation in the city, there are some persons who are honored, feared, and also have big influence on people in their domain. They are nongovernmental persons or groups who illegally take control of various activities, places, and humans in public space. In Indonesia, we called them preman. There is no specific term in English to represent word preman. The closest term maybe bandit or gangster.
The term preman comes from Netherlands word vrijman which means free man or people who don’t want to tie up with rules, but now this term has pejorative connotation. There is a tendency to explain the meaning of word preman as criminal, but sometime if we consider their function in city environment; it’s more complex to give the exact meaning for these bandits. They may address to bad persons whose job are asking money from others by providing services that don’t actually needed, but sometimes they are also needed by some private sectors and government institutions. In fact, our regulator has ambivalent relationship with them. In Jakarta, these bandits have taken part in the vague of city control power. Their knowledge about underground world, criminality in its sector (activity and space) has placed them in the middle of cases solving, like policeman. Basically, they are one of the most important actors in the hidden environment of the city. In the middle of grey area, they are sneaking and set in the space that abandoned by government.
Every jungle has its own tiger; this popular proverb represents the situation of big city like Jakarta which is in every public space there are persons who illegally take control and create unsecured feeling for others. There are various kinds of bandits in Jakarta. The first type is common bandits which consist from persons who take control of crossroad and ask money from drivers who walk trough, until persons who have close relationship with state official like market bandits, debt collectors, hired killers, and every kind of criminals, include recidivists. The second type is certain bandit networks which are organized and controls specific territories like mafia. They are, for example the controller of bars, night clubs, illegal casinos, and prostitution areas whose structure and power also organized for political control, to serve the government.
The existence of third parties who scrambled for control of informal area in almost of all public domain in Jakarta is the proof of DKI Jakarta governments’ fiasco in arranging and controlling their territories into secure area that give comfort and safety for their people. This problem has become more and more complex and harder to solve since the local security institutions tend to cooperate with these bandits in mechanism of sharing earning
Although at the end of 2008, police department tried hard to fight against power abuse by the bandits, it seems that they were not serious in solving this problem. Road criminals like thieves, pick-pockets, extorters, snatchers, and robbers were caught by policeman; hawkers, street musicians, and beggar were driven away from public space such as bus and train stations like Senen, Blok M, and Kota. For several time, we felt a little bit secure when we walked in that area. But that was not guaranteed that those annoying persons will not come back again to disturb and make Jakartans feel restless. Furthermore, there are still organized bandit networks that collaborate with government in handling the control of illegal business. I think these all matter are back to the willingness and commitment of governments to put aside their own personal ambition and fight against all kind of criminality, to serve and give better life for their people. We all hope about this.
source: Jerome Tadie, 2009, Wilayah Kekerasan di Jakarta
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