Following the rapid increase of bird flu fatalities, the Indonesian capital city Jakarta administration Wednesday decided to ban backyard farming among its residents without providing compensation to poultry owners.

The administration gives the owners of chickens, ducks, swans, pigeons and quails, two weeks to consume these fowls properly, sell them, or to simply destroy them from residential areas.

Only those owners with fowls infected with H5N1 virus would receive compensation as much as 12,500 rupiah (1.5 U.S. dollars) per chicken or bird.

According to the decision, starting February, the Husbandry and Fishery Agency would conduct door-to-door inspection and destroy these fowls forcefully without any compensation to residents.

"I hope all Jakartans could support this policy until the government declares that our region is free from bird flu. This is all for our own good," the Jakarta Post daily quoted Governor Sutiyoso as saying Wednesday after leading a bird flu meeting, which also attended by officials from Health Ministry and the National Commission for Bird Flu.

Jakartans may still keep birds and fowls for hobby and research purposes but owners have to attain health certificate from local offices of the Husbandry and Fishery Agency, free of charge.

The agency would also destroy these pet birds if owners refuse to proceed the certificates.

The agency estimated that about half of 2,684 neighboring units in the city are populated with fowls. Each neighboring unit averagely resides about 1,000 fowls.

For the city's poultry industry, the administration would gradually relocate farms and slaughterhouses to designated areas, which are far from residential areas.

The city is currently has about 1,200 legal and illegal slaughterhouses, 27 broiler-chicken breeders, 284 domestic-chicken breeders and 229 duck breeders.

The city also receives 600,000 chickens from its neighboring areas every day.

The head of the National Commission for Avian Influenza and Pandemic Preparedness, Bayu Krisnamurthi praised the administration's policy and hoped that other regions witch already infected with bird flu could also implement the same effort.

"In other regions like West Java and Banten, banning backyard farms and relocating poultry industry should be easier because they still has a lot of non-residential areas," he said.

Indonesia is facing the second attack of bird flu early this month as temperatures drop during traditional flu season.

Four people have died of bird flu in Jakarta during the past week, pushing up the country's death toll from the virus to 61.

Most of the victims were believed to have had contact with infected birds.