Kramat Tunggak hookers to get three-day holiday
JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta administration has ordered prostitutes in the Kramat Tunggak red-light district in North Jakarta to stop working between Aug. 17 to 19 during Indonesia's independence celebrations, an official said.
Chief of the city's rehabilitation project for prostitutes, M. Sihombing told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday there would be no lascivious activity during these three days. Tug-of-war and volley ball competitions are to be held instead.
"We will supervise the area tightly," said Sihombing who prefers to call Kramat Tunggak a "women rehabilitation center" rather than a red-light district.
Sihombing, however, did not mention any sanctions against those who disobeyed the order.
"Most of them have become prostitutes because of their economic condition. If they do not work for too long, how are they going to feed their families?" Sihombing asked.
According to Sihombing, most of the prostitutes in Kramat Tunggak have families to feed.
The city administration has ordered the place to close for only two days, Aug. 16 and 17, in previous years. This is the first time that it was ordered to close for three days, Sihombing said.
Besides Independence Day, Sihombing said, the center also closes during Idul Fitri, Christmas and during the first three days of the fasting month Ramadhan.
The 11-hectare Kramat Tunggak district is home to about 1,850 prostitutes and is the only red-light district controlled by the city administration. The complex was opened in 1972 to keep prostitutes off the city's streets and group them in one site where they could be controlled and taken care of. The city administration has managed the area since 1989. They named it Kramat Tunggak Women's Rehabilitation Center. The district contains more than 250 buildings capable of housing about 2,500 persons, Sihombing said.
The City Council has supported the city administration's three-day closure decree in order to honor Indonesia's Independence Day.
The chairman of Commission E, which is in charge of social welfare matters, Atje Muljadi, said that the prostitutes are Indonesian citizens. "They should participate in the celebrations," he said.
Meanwhile, the prostitutes, brothel operators and officials in this largest prostitution complex in the city, said that none of them had been informed of the forced holiday.
As usual
Other sources said they expected business to go on as usual despite the order.
"This area is only closed during Lebaran," an official from the City Agency for Social Affairs who refused to be named told the Post on Tuesday.
Lebaran is the annual public holiday season when Moslems celebrate the end of the Ramadhan fasting month, also known as Idul Fitri.
Nazar, a civilian security guard at the complex, added "Normally, we make copies of such announcements and stick them on the walls around the complex days before the regulation is to be carried out."
He said that he had received no explicit instruction from his superiors about the three-day closure.
Yeti, 29, one of the more senior inhabitants of the complex, commented, "There have been no holidays here to celebrate Independence Day since this complex opened many years ago."
"The authorities must know that a community like ours does not like to have too many holidays in a year because we need money to live," said Lenah, 19, who was wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan Beware of AIDS.
According to her colleagues the complex is no longer an easy place to earn money, due to the increasing number of prostitutes. (bas/01)