`Becak' drivers pedal through life's hardships

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Life for Salmun, 43, is more often than not quite difficult.

The father of three has been pedaling a becak (three-wheeled pedicab) since 1982 and has no legitimate chance to change his profession, even after he moved from the city in 1990, one year after the administration imposed, for the first time, a ban against the pedicabs.

"I have no other skills. It's much better to be a tukang becak (pedicab driver) rather than be unemployed and turn into a criminal," he told The Jakarta Post recently at Molek housing complex on Jl. Raya Pondok Gede, Bekasi, West Java, technically outside the city limits.

The housing complex is situated right on the border with East Jakarta municipality. A signpost across the road forbids all becak operation in the capital.

Bylaw No. 11/1988 on public order in Jakarta specifically bans the becak. Following its implementation the following year, the city's public order officers rounded up all the pedicabs, seized them and dumped them into the sea.

The becak raids still occur occasionally against the tiny number of pedicabs defiantly operating in the city. Many have transformed their pedicabs into pedi-carts (becak gerobak known by the acronym bego) which can be found at traditional markets carrying goods, usually vegetables, unloaded from trucks to the vendors.

But the administration has also started to evict the bego from the city despite protests by some activists.

Salmun still remembers how he lost his own pedicab during an operation in the city more than 10 years ago. He bought the pedicab for Rp 125,000 (at the time around US$60) -- one fifth of the current price. Months later, public order officers seized his rented pedicab. He then rented another becak but again, it was confiscated. This time, he gave up, and moved outside the city limits to do the same job.

Salmun, who dropped out of school after elementary, said he never got compensation or any alternative to earn a living.

The Jakarta administration had actually offered new jobs for pedicab drivers, for example, to be factory workers, street vendors or tailors as well as joining the transmigration programs to live as farmers outside Java island.

But the offer is only valid for legal Jakarta residents, and Salmun and most others were not born here and have no legal right to live or work within the city.

In the Jakarta Social Institute (ISJ)'s latest 2002 annual report, made public earlier this month, revealed that the change of profession did not improve the former pedicab drivers' lives. For the majority of them, it had reduced their financial stability by between 5 percent and 95 percent.

Activist Wardah Hafidz from the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) added that the administration's program was not working because it has failed to upgrade the pedicab drivers' skills in order that they may pursue other job opportunities.

Salmun's current pedicab belongs to a "boss", to whom he has to pay Rp 30,000 in monthly rent. His daily earnings average about Rp 15,000 due to the tight competition with some two dozen other pedicab drivers in the area.

"Back in the 1980s, with Rp 15,000 per day I could save enough to build a house in my home village in Karawang, West Java. But the same amount now is barely enough to feed my family," Salmun added.

Most of the pedicab drivers operating in Bekasi are those who were evicted from Jakarta.

But Salmun and other drivers rarely blame the Jakarta administration for the hardships. They even said they are ready to move to another place if the Bekasi administration emulated Jakarta.

"The administration is not wrong. The pedicabs are the least useful transportation in big cities. We would only cause traffic problems," said Aca, who started his "career" as a becak driver in 1988 in the Jembatan Baru area of Cengkareng in West Jakarta.

But that's not what Ima, a resident of Molek housing complex, thought about Jakarta's becak-free policy.

"What's wrong with the becak? We still need it, particularly inside the housing complexes where no other public transportation can take us," she told the Post.