Soekarno-Hatta On the Go

NIAN and Nata have been flooded with orders over the last six months. The two 50-something-year-old tradesmen from Rawa Rengas village, Kosambi, in the Tangerang regency of Banten, are receiving all sorts of requests from their neighbors who want to build homes, rentable premises or miscellaneous buildings on their now-vacant plots of land.

Many other tradesmen in adjacent villages are experiencing similar good fortune. Apart from Rawa Rengas, two other villages in Tangerang as well as two urban villages in Tangerang City lie within Soekarno-Hatta International Airport's expansion zone. Since the information was leaked, locals in these five areas seem to have been competing against one another in building whatever they can. Springing up like mushrooms in the rainy season, hundreds of buildings have been built recently, even in paddy fields. "Villagers have been busily building ever since they heard about the planned evictions," Nian said last week.