Hometown ties attract provincial migrants to certain jobs
JAKARTA (JP): Hundreds of thousands of people from many ethnic groups across the country come to Jakarta to try their luck every year.
They meet, mingle and cooperate with each other. Nevertheless, primordial ties such as ethnicity, blood, and origin, still count in many sectors of life, including finding jobs in the informal sector.
People who have lived in the city for years know very well that certain jobs are dominated by people from certain ethnic groups, or people hailing from certain areas.
People from Tegal, Central Java are known for their warteg (warung tegal) streetside food businesses catering to the middle and lower classes.
Bataks from North Sumatra are known for being bus drivers and conductors, streetside tire repairers and oil product sellers.
People from the East Nusa Tenggara province dominate towing services, the Madurese are well known for their satay (barbecued meat) stalls, and those of Chinese descent from Pontianak, West Kalimantan, are very active in the building materials trade.
For many youths from Flores, working as a tow-truck driver or crew member in Jakarta is a guarantee of success, prosperity and security. Every year, more and more youths leave the biggest island in East Nusa Tenggara to work in the towing business in Jakarta.
Felix Weto, an employee at a towing base in Halim Perdanakusuma, East Jakarta, said the work attracted Flores youths because applicants not need special expertise, application letters or even identification cards.
Felix said the Flores people who work in the towing business have various education backgrounds, including university degrees.
"They choose to work as tow truck drivers or crew members because they find it hard to get a better job," he said, adding that there were currently more than 60 Flores people working on his base alone.
He said that the island's pioneers in the business were two men named Isidorus Kelan and Charles Pareira, who started in the tow truck business in 1975. The two went on to buy and operate their own trucks.
Their success prompted youths from their villages near Maumere in eastern Flores, to head for Jakarta and join the business.
Felix, who has been working in the business since 1982, said that his five brothers had also joined the business. One of them, Nelson, currently owns two tow trucks.
Herman Bang, a tow-truck driver with an economics degree, said that more and more Flores youths sought work in the business every time the ship KM Sirimahu -- which serves the Tanjung Priok-Maumere route -- arrives in Tanjung Priok harbor.
He added the tow-truck bases in Halim and Cipinang, run by Marcetero Derek Service and Metropolitan Cipta Tunggal respectively, were the ones dominated by people from Flores.
Unlike the migrants from Flores, the Madurese are known for their satay.
About 12 years ago, Lumho, 47, came from the easternmost town of Sumenep in Madura with the aspiration of setting up his own satay stall in Jakarta.
He is currently a roadside vendor selling chicken satay and lontong (packed rice). Starting work on the streets of Kepu, Central Jakarta, at 6:30 p.m., he tours Kemayoran and Sunter. On Tuesdays and Saturdays however, he stops at places in the Pasar Baru area, Central Jakarta, particularly the Kelinci alley.
"I was lured into this business by my uncle, who did quite well in those days with his own satay stall in the 1970s," Lumho said.
"It was better than selling salt in Sumenep," he added with a laugh.
Lumho mentioned that his three nephews were also roadside vendors in Jakarta.
"Two years ago I told them the satay business was really good here and that if they could do good business selling roadside satay like me, in a few years they could open up a big satay stall."
His other nephews in Sumenep from his fourth sister will join him in early March.
"I told them the same stories ... Anybody can be easily taken by stories of Jakarta," he said.
F. Djunaedi, 44, the owner of the Karya Agung building materials shop on Jl. Bekasi Timur Raya, East Jakarta, first came to Jakarta in the mid 1970s after quitting his civil engineering university course at the Pontianak-based Tanjungpura University in West Kalimantan due to a lack of money.
In Jakarta, he first assisted his brother who was already in the building material trade, one of a group of Pontianak migrants trying their luck in the building material trade, which was then dominated by Chinese from the North Sumatra capital of Medan.
"The first five or six years were the years of learning the ropes of the business, with only two tips to success: winning people's trust in you and being able to look for new business opportunities," Djunaedi said.
The brother entrusted the management of his shop on Jl. Bekasi Timur Raya to him in 1982.
"My brother has given his 'trust' to many of our relatives and friends from our hometown," said Djunaedi, who calls him Big Brother, "because he would just help anybody he could trust."
The Big Brother is now in Singapore building another business.
Together with his wife, also from Pontianak, Djunaedi works hard and has started to taste prosperity. They have a house of their own and can go for vacations abroad together with their three teenage children.
Last but not least, he said, the Pontianak Chinese migrants had managed to take over half of the building material market here from the North Sumatran Chinese. (team)