Homeless people give city a headache

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Jakarta administration said on Wednesday it had locked up 6,943 people in a crackdown on homeless people, beggars, street urchins, sex workers and other members of the city's dispossessed from January to November.

During a similar operation last year, the city detained 2,300 people.

"With the arrest of so many people with social problems, our two rehabilitation centers are overcapacity by about 15 percent each," said Sjarief Mustafa, head of the City Mental, Spiritual and Social Welfare Agency.

Jakarta has two social rehabilitation centers, in Kedoya, West Jakarta, and Cipayung, East Jakarta. The center in West Jakarta currently houses 4,126 patients and the center in East Jakarta 2,817 patients.

Sjarief said his agency would ease the pressure on the rehabilitation centers by shipping the patients back to their hometowns and villages.

"We are cooperating with other provincial administrations to organize the return of the patients to their hometowns and villages," he told The Jakarta Post.

He acknowledged that about 10 percent of the people arrested during this operation had also been arrested during previous operations.

"We need support from other city agencies to help prevent people with social problems from returning to the streets. It just creates more problems for us," he said.

Sjarief said that despite the lack of rehabilitation facilities, the agency would continue its regular crackdowns "to clean the city of people with social problems".

The agency has identified 86 areas and intersections that are frequented by beggars, prostitutes, homeless peoples and others with social problems.

Of those detained during the operation, 1,219 were homeless people, 3,996 beggars, 724 sex workers or transvestite, 473 people with mental disorder, 312 three-in-one joki (paid auto passengers), 45 lepers, 69 street musicians, 82 street urchins, 14 beggars and nine illegal traffic wardens.

"We also found people who pretended to be street sweepers and went around to houses asking for money," he said.

Despite the recent operation, the Post observed on Wednesday street children and beggars at many of the city's intersections, including in Cawang and along Jl. Bekasi Timur, both in East Jakarta, as well as in the area around Senayan, Central Jakarta.

Numerous joki could also be seen along Jl. Gatot Subroto, in the Sudirman Central Business District and on Jl. S. Parman.