Canal Evictions in North Jakarta Show Fishing Community Crisis

The Jakarta Globe, Fidelis E Satriastanti

To ask a fisherman to stay away from the sea is to ask the unthinkable. At least that is what a 26-year-old wife of a fisherman thinks.

“Can you force those who have been working on dry land all of their lives to earn a living by going out to sea every day? Have you ever heard of a fisherman living in a building, far from the sea?” said Risma, who knows of the hardships of being a fisherman’s wife.

Passengers on a small ferry negotiating their way between two large vessels. Each passenger pays Rp 1,000 (11 cents) to cross from Muara Baru fishing village to Sunda Kelapa, both in North Jakarta. (Photo: Afriadi Hikmal, JG)

Her family, one of 150 in the Marunda Kepu village of Cilincing in North Jakarta, is now, more than ever, struggling to make ends meet because they have been forced from land that will be used to develop the long-awaited East Flood Canal.

The fishing communities understand the importance of the canal — scheduled to be up and running by Dec. 31 — in reducing the impact of flooding in the capital, but have stressed that the local administration should have considered the negative effect on their lives before evicting them.

Tiarom, 33, emphasized that he is not against development.

“I just hope the government gives some thought to us fishermen. Give us access to fish. Don’t just scare us off,” he said.

Tiarom, whose family has been fishing for generations, said the administration had offered the community low-cost apartments in the area.

“We’d be better off living in our boats rather than living in a building. Fishermen need to spread their nets. We need space for that. There is no way that fishermen can survive living in buildings like that,” he said, adding that 70 percent of people living in Marunda fished in nearby ponds and the sea.

Slamet Daryoni, chief of urban environmental education at the Indonesian Green Institute, said the local administration should have been more communicative and provided fishermen with better alternatives.

“The problem is that these fishermen were never involved in discussions [about the project]. You can’t just change their lifestyles and hope they can adapt within a few months,” Slamet said. “They have been fishermen all their lives. This is what they know and do.”

“It is very obvious the government is trying to isolate them, as if they don’t exist.”

He said the affected villages were located in the middle of the canal project.

“It’s true that most of these people don’t own the land and they have no legal certificates to prove ownership. But I don’t believe isolating them is the answer,” Slamet said.

“They just want to make a living, for their kids to go to school, and if the government could just sit down and talk to them, they’d be happy to listen.”

In order to survive, Tiarom said that if they could not go to sea, they would end up becoming cilong , or ragpickers, searching through garbage dumps to make a living. Only a few would look for odd jobs on construction sites.

“If we go to sea, we can earn at least Rp 40,000 ($4.25) to Rp 60,000 a day if the catch is good. On a bad day we only make about Rp 10,000,” he said. “The past three years have been hard because of the unpredictable weather, and pollution from the surrounding industries has caused fish numbers to shrink.”

Abdul Hadi, a professor at Paramadina University, said only a few traditional fishing communities were staying faithful to their trades.

More than 80 people in Jakarta were killed and thousands more left homeless due to flooding in 2007. Floods also prompted the closure of the city’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport in 2008. Monsoon rains cause flooding almost every year in Jakarta, where the only flood-control canal is too small to handle the runoff.

“We are facing a crisis in this country in regard to the existence of fishing communities. This should be seen as a cultural conflict,” Abdul said. “We can’t force these people to trade off their cultures and livelihoods for something completely alien to them.”