While everybody enjoys the convenience of being able to walk down damn near any street in Jakarta and finding kaki limas selling a wide variety of cheap, tasty food, we also all hate the macet and inconvenience that those same street vendors can create by taking up valuable real estate on sidewalks and busy streets.
It looks like the West Jakarta administration is getting serious about getting kaki limas off of its streets. The government announced that, out of the approximately 18,000 street vendors officially licensed to operate in West Jakarta, some 1,157 have already been relocated while the remaining 17,743 street vendors would soon be moved to traditional markets and other temporary locations.
“Right now, these 17,743 kaki limas are scattered all over in places such as parks, sidewalks and other public spaces,” said the head of the department of Cooperative Micro Small Medium Enterprises and Trade (KUMKMP) in West Jakarta, Slamet Widodo, as quoted by Berita Jakarta.
Slamet said Jakarta Governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama had targeted the kaki lima relocation efforts to be completed by the end of this year.
