East Jakarta's Low-Cost Apartments Unsafe for Children: KPAI
Jakarta. The Indonesian Child Protection Commission, or KPAI, has criticized East Jakarta's newly operated, low-cost apartment complex for safety hazards found in their units.
The buildings were built by the Jakarta administration in its effort to provide housing for residents displaced by public works in the capital.
“The windows are very low,” KPAI commissioner Maria Ulfa Anshor said after inspecting a number of rooms in the West Jatinegara apartment block on Tuesday, according to news portal Kompas.com.
“It is very dangerous to open those windows because they are not equipped with security bars. Only a few rooms have windows with bars – and the bars only go halfway at that,” she added.
Maria said she had spoken with the apartments' manager about the safety problem, and the latter promised to install security bars. It is not clear, however, when the work will be done.
“This is very risky; toddlers especially like to climb on anything.”
Maria also criticized the absence of a playground for children in the two-tower apartment complex. Each tower consists of 16 floors, hosting 518 apartment units combined.
She added she would report her findings to the Jakarta administration, as well as the Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection and the Ministry of Social Services, to ensure a follow-up to the report.
“If [the Jakarta administration] really wants to make these kind of low-cost apartments a model [for next relocation solution], they have to at least meet common standards,” Maria said.
“But what seems to matter [to the administration] right now is providing a place for people to relocate ̶ even though these buildings are not yet livable,” she added.
Among targeted occupants of the new apartment complex in Jatinegara are residents of the nearby slum neighborhood Kampung Pulo.
The Jakarta administration's attempt to evict them last week turned violent as the residents, who have been living in the areas for decades, refuse to be relocated from the banks of the Ciliwung river.
The relocation program is part of the administration's aim to revitalize the river in order to reduce floods that hit Jakarta annually, with Kampung Pulo being among areas that have been regularly inundated during peaks of the rainy season.
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