"Starting this year until 2014, the Ministry of People`s Housing will relocate the inhabitants of the slums in Ciliwung riverside," the ministry`s Director for Poverty Eradication in Urban Areas Wawan Mulyawan said here on Monday.
He said prior to the relocation, the ministry would familiarize the program to the local people.
He said the Ministry of People`s Housing in 2012 had allocated Rp754 billion with 57 percent of the budget for the provinces outside Jakarta.
Earlier, the then People`s Housing Minister Suharso Monoarfa said the government`s target was to make 30 percent of Indonesian cities free from slums by 2019.
"The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the world in 2020 include improvement of slums," he said.
He said in 2009 Indonesia had 8 million homeless families, families who had no proper health care and housing. With the assumption of building 500,000 houses for them per annum it would take 16 years to provide poor families with modest living quarters.
The minister said that the government would need 16 years to get rid of slums and provide homeless families with proper and modest shelters. However, he said, the assumption had not yet taken into account the growth of the country`s population.(*)
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Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
