Thanks to Emmy Fitri for tweeting me the link to this story in The Jakarta Globe: Bird Flu Fears in Indonesia: Flap Over Jakarta Pet Market Move. Excerpt:
Despite lingering fears about the spread of bird flu in the country with the world’s highest number of fatalities from the deadly avian influenza virus, Indonesia’s largest pet market has survived several attempts to relocate it.
Located in East Jakarta, Pasar Pramuka is one of the 23 pet markets in Jakarta that sell birds. It boasts no fewer than 152 stores selling anything from various pigeon breeds and ducks to ornamental chickens.
The market, which is popular with many Jakarta shoppers, sits just 5m from the densely populated Pal Meriam residential area — a clear challenge to municipal laws that ban poultry from being reared within 25m of residential areas.
While the laws specifically refer to farmed poultry and slaughterhouses, it is clear that pet birds would pose similar risks of spreading bird flu to humans.
But the people living near Pasar Pramuka are not worried.
“The pet market has been around for 30 years. We haven’t had anyone here catching bird flu,” Evaldi, 46, who lives about 20m from the market, said as his six-year-old son Razaq Gumanti, played with his pet bird.
His neighbor Damiri, too, told The Straits Times: “They have been keeping Pasar Pramuka market very clean, probably the cleanest market in the country. As long as they keep up with that hygiene work, we should not be worried.”
It is the kind of response that frustrates Ipih Ruyani, Jakarta’s top bureaucrat overseeing the culling of sick poultry and checking on whether poultry handlers keep to the rules.
“Their typical argument is: We have been living with live poultry for years. If there were bird flu, we would have caught it a long time ago,” she said, sighing.
Jakarta’s municipal government has been trying to move Pasar Pramuka for the past four years but has been facing delays from a combination of protests from stallholders and the public, as well as slow bureaucracy.
The first attempt was made in 2007, the year 37 people died from bird flu in Indonesia. The country accounts for almost half of human bird flu fatalities, and saw 45 people die in 2006.
