10,000 jobless join labor intensive project

JAKARTA (JP): A total of 10,120 jobless people with senior high school backgrounds will participate in an eight-month labor intensive project in Jakarta, beginning on Wednesday.

In his speech during the ceremony to mark the start of the project at Cibubur camping ground in East Jakarta, Governor Sutiyoso said that the participants, most of whom had just lost their jobs, would be deployed to 114 privately-owned businesses in and around the capital with a monthly salary of Rp 300,000 per person.

The project, he said, is sponsored by the central government which has allocated Rp 60.01 billion from the state budget for the project.

Besides the salary, the participants will also receive extra money from their employers.

"We will give, for example, a certain proportion of our profits to them," said an entrepreneur, who had decided to open the doors of his businesses to temporarily employ some of the unemployed Jakartans.

Badly crippled by the weakening of the rupiah and the mid-May riots, unemployment in the capital, home to some 10 million people, had soared from 747,760 people in June last year when the crisis hit to at least 825,000 so far this year.

"I hope," the governor said, "the participants in this project can also create new jobs for other jobless people in the future," Sutiyoso said.

Among the businesses set to hire participants of the project are those involved in agribusiness, fisheries, food and leather, handicraft industries, retailing, restaurants, mini department stores, photo copying outlets, barbershops and photographic studios.

Sabar Sianturi, chief of the Jakarta manpower ministry office, said the participants in this labor intensive project represented only four percent of the total unemployed with a high school education in the city.

"But we hope the snowball effect of this scheme could further create jobs for other jobless people," Sabar said. (jun)