The Jakarta administration is set to continue the river restoration program this year by relocating residents living along the banks of the Ciliwung, Sunter and Pesanggrahan rivers to low cost apartments in a bid to mitigate annual flooding in the capital.

“The process of river restoration [or] naturalization, [does not mean] evicting the people, but relocating the residents to a proper place,” Water Management Agency head Teguh Hendrawan said on Friday according to kompas.com.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan brought up the river naturalization plan when asked recently about the city's flood mitigation plan.

Teguh said the relocation would be conducted shortly after the city administration had finished gathering data on the land that needed to be acquired for the program.

He added that residents who owned land certificates would receive compensation, however, the ongoing survey had shown that most of the residents did not own the certificates.

The data collection process would take time to be done thoroughly to prevent legal disputes in the future, he said.

“We need to take care when checking the administrative documents because we need to be accountable for the money spent for compensation,” Teguh said. (cal)