Educator wants new ministry for child welfare

Educator wants new ministry for child welfare

JAKARTA (JP): An educator of child workers and street children
has suggested that a ministry for child welfare be established to
avoid continued abuse of impoverished children.

A state minister would coordinate programs better than the
current handling of children's welfare by several ministries,
Roostien Ilyas said yesterday, after a visit to one of her
centers for children working in the Kramat Jati market, East
Jakarta.

The center in the local youth organization building provides
two hours of study in the morning for around 20 children five
times a week. They are five to 17 years old.

The children, whose parents work in the market, also earn
between Rp 3,000 (US$1.3) and Rp 21,000 a day at jobs like
sorting chili and fruit for supermarkets, or carrying loads.

"It's as if children's programs were only project-oriented,"
Roostien said, while important issues like the bill on child
labor remains unsettled. In colloquial Indonesian project could
mean financial profit.

Roostien, who chairs the Nanda Dian Nusantara foundation, said
without changes in the law, basic rights like education remain
weak for child workers.

She estimated Jakarta has at least 20,000 uneducated children
on its streets or in workplaces.

"So far the nine-year compulsory basic education program is
hit-and-miss without supporting methods," Roostien told The
Jakarta Post after receiving guests from the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID), one of the foundation's
donors.

She said while basic education is compulsory, it is not
enforced by picking up street children and schooling them.

"The market children here are an impact of the absence of such
measures," Roostien said.

While most parents agree to have their children educated, some
punish their children when the youngsters fail to deliver their
daily share of the family's income.

"The relationship between children and their elders is
sometimes exploitative," she said. Both natural children and
those adopted from early ages for begging are obliged to "pay
back" their elders, she added.

A special minister for child welfare would be able to better
incorporate such problems in policies like compulsory education,
she said.

The foundation's project leader, Firman Hidayat, said he and
the volunteers are still struggling with the ways of the
children, though after three years they said there is much
progress.

Up to Rp 60,000 from a week's hard work can be spent on
weekends playing video games at the nearby Kramat Jati Indah
shopping center, Firman said.

Among the children is a widow of 15 and a bridegroom and his
bride-to-be of almost the same age.

Another teenager had earlier commented that in the market,
it is usual to find unmarried mothers, who either raise or abort
their children.

"Worrying about having no husband is just a rich person's
anxiety, not ours," she said, as quoted by a volunteer.

Stephen Grant, the head of education and training at USAID,
said programs such as those run by the foundation are important
as the government cannot reach out to all children who need
education. (anr)