THE IMPLEMENTATIONOF SLUMAND SQUATTER IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS IN THE RIVER BASINS OF YOGYAKARTA

Permukimandisepanjangdaerahaliransungai (DAS) merupakanmasalahyang tidak bisa dihindarkan di kota-kota besar di Indonesia. Kota Yogyakarta dialiri tiga sungai yang kiri-kanannya terdapat hunian yang padat. Selain padat, kualitas permukimanjuga buruk. Pihakpenguasa tidak lagi berusaha untuk menghilangkan permukimanitukarenadianggap tidakakanmemecahkanmasalah. Sebaliknya, telah diimplementasikan kebijakan yang tujuannya untuk memperbaiki kualitas permukiman tersebut, baikdarisisifisik maupunnonfisik. Tidakkurangdari tujuh program telah dilaksanakan disepanjangaliran sungaidi Yogyakarta. Sayangnya, sebagian besar program tersebut belum bisa dikatakan sukses. Sifat program yang sporadis atau tidak berkesinambungan, kurang terlibatnya pemimpin informal setempat, dan lemahnya upaya menggalangpartisipasi masyarakat adalah sebagian penyebab kurangberhasilnya program-programyangdilaksanakan.


Introduction
The problem of slums and squatters in the Yogyakarta town, which are mainly located in the river basins, has been so alarming.There are some issues as to why the problem of slums is closely related to the urban development policies.First, the density of population in these areas is growing higher.In the two main rivers of Yogyakarta, the Code and Winongo, the density is 142.95 people/Ha and 132.46 people/Ha respectively whereas the total density for the regency is about 130 people/Ha.Second, the quality of life in the areas is worsening.In the sample area of the slums, five out of 14 Kelurahan (sub-district) in Yogyakarta has a very high building coverage (Building Coverage Ratio is up to 80%) with very minimum environmental and health qualities.
There are also some complexities in dealing with the slums.The push factor which encourages the ruralists to move into these slums is still very strong because of poverty and lack of job opportunities in the rural areas.The city itself does not provide the best alternative for the urbanists as the available job opportunities are in the informal sector.Then the most plausible policy pertaining to the slum areas in Yogyakarta is not to eradicate slums and squatters.From the political point of view, eradication is certainly not popular and the experience of eradication in Jakarta, Manado and some other cities has never been successful.This approach has virtually never been successful in tackling the core problem and achieving the intended goals.

Environment and living conditions: the background
Slums and squatters are two interchangeable phenomena which operationally refer to the dwellings occupied by persons or families who: a) encroach upon private and government properties without legal permits; b) live in substandard (dilapidated and congested) dwellings; and c) are generally considered as living below the poverty line.However, some scholars define these two phenomena as slightly different.Squatter is primarily a legal concept which involves the occupancy of a piece of land or building without the permission of the owner whereas slums primarily refer to living in homes that are dilapidated and congested such that the condition poses health, fire and crime hazard not only to those who live in the slums but also to the whole urban community.Actually, some of the squatters have houses in other villages or kampongs.
It is obvious that the problems of slums and squatters are closely related to the housing and poverty of the urban population.For housing particularly, there are some reasons to explain why housing problems in urban areas are more acute compared to rural areas.The rural population is generally able to construct their own housing.While most rural households do not own any homelots, the majority possess houses.Urban areas, on the other hand, face the pressures of rapid population growth and the declining availability of land for housing.The urban poor usually live in makeshift houses in or around public properties.In general, the public properties which are occupied by the slum and squatter dwellers are public plazas, parks, cemeteries and, most notably, river basins.
There are three rivers across the Kotamadya Yogyakarta, Winongo in the west, Code in the center, and Gadjah Wong in the east.Most of the slums are located in the Code and Winongo so that the sample of Kelurahans is taken from these two river basins.Based on the survey conducted by Geocitra Consultant (1991), 22% of the inhabitants have the right to occupy the land, 18% of the inhabitants are tenants, 4% occupy with authority from the kelurahan, 38% are not registered and the rest have unregistered status.There are very limited representative pavements in the kampongs as these pavements are only 1.2 (show units) on average.In general, the buildings are only 32-52 m2 and are inhabited by 8.6 persons per house on average.Facilities used by residents along the river basin are limited.For instance, only about 15% of them have access to clean water.Meanwhile, the majority drink groundwater whose quality is not monitored, and about 2% of these residents use water from the river for domestic purposes.Besides this purpose, the river has also been used as a public toilet as well as the place for garbage disposal.
Most of the residents, 65 per cent, do not have permanent jobs or change from one job to another.Today, a resident may be a driver, tomorrow he may be a street vendor, and after that he might become a construction employee, and so forth.Thus, job security is a very important issue in the slum areas.Incomes are considerably low, most often less than 96,000 rupiahs (US $ 49) per month.Most of the residents have low levels of education.Because parents have to think mostly about how to survive with their basic needs, "their attention to children's education is very low".It can be understood, then, that 37% of the residents only have primary school certificates, 30% graduated from secondary school and 16% graduated from high school.The rest (around 17%) are those who have never attended school, but have been involved in Paket A courses (equivalent of primary school).
From the government perspective, river basin area is not ideal for settlement as it can be wiped out by floods any time.Therefore, government has stipulated a regulation providing the border line (sempadan) along the rivers, beyond which, settlement is prohibited.According to the Municipality Regulation No.5/1992, for the rivers that have dikes, the border line should be 5 meters from the dikes.For rivers which have no dikes, the line shall be determined by the Governor based on the subsequent laws.However, in practice the regulation is not upheld consistently.The residents do not perceive that the river basin is too dangerous for habitation.In fact, according to the statistics the disastrous floods will only occur every 50 years.When it happens, of course, houses along river basin will be damaged but inhabitants perceive that disasters can occur anywhere and they are mostly unpredictable.

Policies and programs
In 1984/1985, the government launched the first Kampong Improvement Program (KIP) in Terban kampong, the northern part of Code river, with an aid funding from the World Bank.This program was aimed at overcoming further kampung deterioration by improving kampong physical environment and its sanitation.Pavements, storm water drainages, squatting toilets (jamban keluarga), clean water facilities, and sewerage systems were built with the KIP funding.The kampong conditions have been improved in some parts of the slum.But the influx of ruralists residing in the slum areas was never ended.They came to Gondolayu, Prawirodirjan, and the southern part of Code river which then became a squatter area.The local government initiated a more harsh approach to demolish the squatters altogether because much of the environmental regulation was infringed.But the residents who were backed by Romo Mangun, an architect and Catholic priest who was deeply trusted by people as an informal leader, strongly opposed the policy.They said that the policy was simply unacceptable because they were still able to enjoy living in the area without flood threats more over the government could not provide better areas.Romo Mangun was able to prove that the area was quite suitable for settlement.He even managed to convince people to upgrade the kampong through a self-help mechanism.
Finally, government gave up the eviction plan and even responded positively to their opinions.There after, government launched new projects within the kampongs.Apart from the KIP, there have been many projects which are aimed at improving the living conditions in the slums along the river basins: 1. Slum Areas Social Rehabilitation (Rehabilitasi Sosial Daerah Kumuh, RSDK); The objectives are to improve the settlements and cleanliness of the environment, to stimulate community's responsibility for their environment and to enhance local community institutions.
The target groups are the poor families who have poor housing.Practically, implementation of project is the project renovating poor housings through a self-help mechanism.
2. Social-economic Enhancement for the Poor (Usaha Sosial Ekonomi Produktif Keluarga Miskin, USEP-KM); The main objective is to increase households' income and to harmonize social relationship among the community members.
The project goes to the women of poor families through PKK (Women's Family Welfare Institution).Subsequent projects also involve the Youth Institutions.USEP-KM allocates a stimulating fund in order to increase the income of the households in the slums.
3. Community Venture Projects (Pembinaan Usaha Kesejahteraan Sosial Masyarakat, PUKSM); It is targeted to improve housing quality, to improve the skills of poor people and to enhance the role of local community institutions.Instructors are assigned to train the poor so that they will hopefully be able to create their own jobs.The project also provides funds for small ventures for the poor.

Vocational Training Project (Proyek Peningkatan Keterampilan
Tenaga Kerja, PPKT); It is also a training project to increase the youth skills and to improve households' income.The vocational training includes electronics and sewing skills.The recipients also get funds and equipment to start their own businesses.
5. Healthy River Project (Proyek Kali Bersih, Prokasih); The objective is to minimize the impact of household sewerage which flows to the rivers.It only includes the provision of better sanitation facilities and filtering liquid waste goes to the rivers.The project also monitors the water quality along the rivers.
6. Urban Settlement Improvement Project (Proyek Penyehatan Lingkungan Permukiman Kota, PPLPK); The project has similar objectives as the Prokasih.But it emphasizes more on physical facilities such as drainage, footsteps, garbage bins and public toilets.
7. Environment and Settlement Health Project (Proyek Peningkatan Kesehatan Lingkungan dan Permukiman, PKLP); The project is executed by the local branch of the Department of Health.The objective is to improve the quality of community's health.It is implemented through the provision of squattings, public toilets, the monitoring of epidemic diseases, water pollution and noise.
The above policy alternatives can be categorized as an incremental approach in the sense that they are supposed to make gradual improvements of the existing conditions without a drastic or structural policy.However, there are actually some alternative programs intended to overcome the rampant slum areas which are very holistic in terms of their magnitude, consequences social change to the cost incurred and the work volume.Usually these programs are planned, organized and controlled directly by the central or provincial government.More structural programs will only be described very concisely as there are some reasons as to why the programs are not practically implementable in the area although they have been quite successful in some other areas of Indonesia.

The transmigration
This has been a m assive program which constitutes an alternative policy to deal with the issue of unbalanced population in Indonesia.Transmigration is based on the national target to move inhabitants from densely populated Java island to other islands.It involves a high amount of funding and long term planning.There is much evidence, however, that it is not a good alternative to overcome the problem of the growing slums in urban areas.During the last two decades of the transmigration program, there have been many transmigrants from urban slum areas who could not afford to survive in the newly inhabited agricultural lands in Kalimantan, Sulawesi or Irian Jaya.These transmigrants simply could not adapt their skills of working in urban areas to become farmers in the rural-agricultural areas and thereby could not improve their wealth.Many of them preferred to come back to the urban slums in Java.

The Liposos
It is supposed to be the program to overcome social problems in the big cities such as the beggars and the homeless.Liposos is mainly implemented by the Social Department.In practice, the program trains and guides the residents of the slum areas to become self reliant, live in appropriate sanitary conditions, and to become more vigilant and caring about the environment, personal healthy and hygiene, and better settlements.However, as a guidance and training program Liposos is not so effective.Soon after the participants get out from Liposos and back to their families, they seem not to be really benefiting from the training program and still do not care about their environmental conditions.In fact, some might say that Liposos is no more than a free hostel for the beggars, homeless, and the pemulung (scavengers) in the slum areas.

The relocation
The influx of urbanists to the growing cities such as Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Medan and Ujung Pandang as a side effect of urban inclined development process is inevitable.The policy to strictly close the urban area to the migrants from rural areas is virtually impossible because industrialization and modernization are more concentrated in the urban areas.One alternative to reduce the flux is to relocate the migrants in urban slums back to the suburban or rural areas and build better facilities in those areas.It can also be implemented by developing new settlements outside the city with supporting facilities and infrastructure.But of course this policy implies a great deal of resources.Also, in many other instances, the relocation program has had negative social impacts upon the residents who are relatively established and stable in their occupations.So far, the limited funding that was financed by government in providing public infrastructure, coupled with the problem of transportations and lack of job opportunities for the slums residents, have remained potential obstacles to the relocation program.

Policy implementation and evaluation: assessing the programs efficacy
The Kampong Improvement Program is among the successful programs in dealing with the slum problems.It can be observed through the cleaner and the more orderly settlement in the areas which have been enrolled in these projects.It is also quite obvious that the community becomes more concerned about the quality of the environment.Nevertheless, there have been some weaknesses.The implementation of the project is mostly operated through a tendering mechanism and community members are not involved in the project from the beginning.It creates some disadvantages.First, because the people are not involved in planning and implementation of the projects, their sense of belonging for the houses that have been built and their responsibilities are usually very low.As a result, they do not maintain the housings properly.Second, since the construction of the housings were given directly to the contractors --who are usually profit oriented and lack the competence--the quality of the buildings cannot be guaranteed.Third, most of the time, the project puts too much emphasis on quantity targets.Consequently, there has been less control on the quality of the housings.
The above weaknesses cannot be resolved easily because there are some procedures that should be followed by the agencies for public projects.According to the Presidential Decree No.29/1984, all the procurement for public facilities, bids, and auctions should be conducted through open tendering, contracting and purchasing.
The government assumes that by giving the jobs to contractors, there will be more targets achieved.The problem is that most of the contractors are not really concerned about the community's needs and aspirations.They are usually reluctant to communicate with the target beneficiaries about the best way to conduct projects.
Participation can be indicated by the degree of involvement by the community in supporting the additional fund set outside the budget by the government.This system works in RSDK projects in certain locations such as in Prawirodirjan (Code river basin) and Gedongkiwo (Winongo river basin).The government did not directly build the houses in these two kampongs.Instead, the officials built some kind of pilot project in the area and gave the fund directly to the local cooperatives.The owners of the pilot project housings are obliged to return the fund through an amortization mechanism to the local cooperatives.These local institutions were obviously able to manage the fund on their own.After the pilot project has been successfully implemented, the community will then resolve and regenerate the fund through local savings and borrowing cooperatives.From the initial 16 houses built in 1988, the community was able to build 44 houses in 1991 (Local Agency for Public Works, 1993).It may be true that the increasing capability of the community is simply because of the increase in their income or economic capability.However, it also appears that the RSDK project has contributed to initialize more concern among the people about the necessity of building better environment and housings.
RSDK succeeded in the implementation of this protect as well as the other projects such as the healthy river project.The less successful project is USEP-KM.However, the community participation is mostly evident in RSDK projects but not in the others in which residents could accept the program without intention to sustain it.There are several reasons to explain why community intention to continue the project is weak.First, the projects seem to be a package delivered by government to the community.Second, as a consequence, the community tends to be an object rather than the subject.In other words, there is lack of sense of ownership.Third, projects such as Social-Economic Enhancement and Vocational Training need to continue with the relevant projects, for instance, marketing training.Consequently, after attaining production skills, trainees cannot sell their produce in a market which is becoming increasingly competitive every other day.Finally they should stop economic activities in the post training period.
So far, community needs and participation have been the most crucial factors determining the effectiveness of the project implementation.As far as the community participation is concerned, there are some community aspiration which should be considered by policy makers: ? Although flooding in Winongo and Code river is not perceived as a threat, the effort to overcome problems caused by floods, namely the risks of the area that would be wiped out by the flood and the risk of properties damaged, are imperative.Therefore, the secure feeling a mong the residents is very important to be more actively involved in improving their quality of life.
? The established land status is also important for the residents in the river basin areas.They wish that the government would guarantee their land, job security, and their formal status as residents.Even though some of their houses are semipermanent and permanent, they still have the impression that they live in prohibited areas.
? Topographic conditions in the river basin areas have some disadvantages for t he people to tackle the environmental problems with their limited financial resources.Therefore, the funding aid from the government to improve environmental facility is eagerly needed by the community to encourage their participation to maintain and sustain their environment.
? Because of the changes that have been going on in the kampongs, the urban drainage and sanitation in the river basins are not well taken care of.1993).The residents are certainly annoyed because the drainage and sanitation facilities cannot function.
? The skills and capability of the migrant residents are generally low and that is precisely the constraint for them to grab better economic opportunities.Thus, skill and managerial training programs should be conducted more seriously so that they are able to improve on their welfare and find a better location settlement.The government understands that community participation is a crucial element.However, local bureaucrats and administrators do not know to involve community members in the projects.Learning from the successful projects such as RSDK in gathering participation, the mediating person or the informal leader would improve on community participation.This person could understand what community members need and how to communicate with them.Unfortunately, program implementors look hesitant to work with informal leaders as intimate partners.They fear that involving informal leaders may lessen their success.In addition, perception of the implementors is not compatible with formal leaders.Many programs were not conducted under well-established coordination procedures.Ideally, kampong improvement projects and their supporting programs are under one umbrella.Thus, there will be no overlapping programs.As mentioned above, some programs have overlapped in goals, targets and areas.It was inefficient, but to coordinate several programs conducted by several departments is not easy.Usually each department has to show its existence.On the other hand, the budget and scope of the program is rarely sufficient to improve on the quality of settlement.More drastically, projects were conducted sporadically.Policy makers and program implementors have never tried to evaluate accurately and they also have never had continuous programs based on the evaluation.

Concluding remarks
The settlement improvement programs include physical and non physical aspects in which the earlier aspect seems to be more successful in its implementation.Since most programs emphasize the later aspects, many programs have not succeeded yet.If the program essentially stimulates community members to improve their quality of life, rather than completely solve the problems, then participation of community members will be a very important factor contributing to the success of the program implementation as indicated in the case of KIP and RSDK projects.To initiate participation and involvement of community members, the role of the mediating person or the informal leader will be the next factor which can not be neglected.Romo Mangun has shown this by motivating community to improve on their settlements.Learning from the failure of the projects, it can be concluded that the lack of success was also caused by sporadic implementation as well as poor coordination among project implementors.

Recommendations
1.The government should give priority to the policy which would not imply demolition of slums and squatters.
2. Participation among the occupants can be maximized by giving them opportunity to participate in the policy making process.It would be better for the government to accommodate what should be developed and financed.
3. The government should acknowledge the role of informal leaders in mediating the interests of government and the people during the implementation process.

Table 1 . Implemented Projects in Sample Area
Almost 85 per cent of the outlets that were initially built in the open spaces are now in very dense housing arca (Local Agency for Public Works,