Kramat Tunggak still busy despite relocation plans

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): Tinah, not her real name, has lived barely two weeks in the red-light complex in Kramat Tunggak, North Jakarta, leaving her seven-year-old son with her mother in Gunung Kidul, Yogyakarta.

With her sunken cheeks, she is more withdrawn than the other women. She looks too old for a beginner.

Tinah says she has never "worked" before, but was forced to when her husband left her.

"Coming from that area, your name must be Sri something, right?" a visitor says. And Sri, or Tinah, or whoever she is, nods.

Tinah has a few days to adjust before braving her first man.

She dares not venture outside the complex as she has no idea where in Jakarta she is.

"The bus number 6 outside leads straight to the Tanjung Priok terminal," another visitor says, trying to sound helpful.

"The girls here don't want to go anywhere, they are well taken care of," snaps one suspicious oyster vendor.

Tinah says she feels surrounded by friends in her new residence, one of the 250 'guesthouses' in the complex.

"You must think I've been here for a long time, we look so close," she said.

Friendships grow between the girls in these houses. There is a bar, dancing rooms and bedrooms with small windows.

Tinah arrived on the day the news broke that the city wants to move the complex, officially a rehabilitation center, to the distant Seribu Islands.

A dozen of her new friends have assured her the plan is nonsense. "It's an old story," one woman said.

The women had a few more idle hours of chatting, nibbling snacks and dancing to loud dangdut music before heading for the bathroom.

Since the early 1970s, Kramat Tunggak has been home to women of poor families, mostly from villages near Indramayu, West Java. Thousands have come and gone. The official age of inhabitants is 18 to 35.

Around 1800 women live here but newcomers and those who return are unlikely to be recorded.

Shy young men selling underwear and sexy tops, water and the noodle vendors, and public transport drivers depend on the 11.5- hectare area.

"It's where the most passengers are heading," one driver said.

Men seek 16-year-old girls like confident-looking Lisa. With a purple love-bite on her neck, Lisa said she would go home rather than move to the Seribu Islands. "I've saved enough during my nine months here," she said.

But one girl who returned home to set up a warung, lost it and came back.

The villagers, she said, didn't pay up.

Others who leave may end up as prostitutes in lower-class brothels. Pleasuring a man who may give one a tip on top of the charge of Rp 35,000 is much easier than spending the day at a garment factory for Rp 5,000.

Being a Kramat Tunggak prostitute is prestigious. It is virtually legitimate and no one chases them around.

Street walkers, who are paid up to Rp 20,000, say they would like to join the rehabilitation program, which involves Koran recitals, sewing, and medical check-ups, says Charles Surjadi, a researcher in a community-based AIDS awareness project in North Jakarta.

The women in the streets or shacks along the railroad know that those who end up in the complex are the most beautiful, or have the best connections to the recruiters who comb the villages.

The complex looks well cared for. It seems buildings are renovated every time there is a rumor that the complex will be moved.

The narrow roads are plastered, and there are plenty of parking spaces. The money is pouring in, so no one cares about the flies.

With land alone reported to cost Rp 300,000 per square meter, owners and pimps can look forward to making a fortune when a private developer is found to take over the site.

Then new brothels will crop up, say experienced residents and researchers.

Those brothels which were supposed to have been eliminated in the 1970 drive to centralize prostitutes are still around. Many of these sites have existed for a long time, when the women catered to the men working on the railroads and the sailors passing through North Jakarta's ports.

Even the poorer sites, Kalibaru, Rawabebek, and Penjaringan, to name but a few, are big business, a researcher said.

The Rp 20,000 charge per visitor pays for the pimp, the rent, and for security fees to the organized crime syndicates. The pimp will pay the preman besar, who is also paid by the agent distributing the beer and other drinks.

Pimps also pay a monthly fee to the neighborhood chief, and to the police and military -- they all profit from the 2000-odd illegal prostitutes in North Jakarta alone.

Legislator Nafsiah Mboi's call for dialog between sex workers and the authorities on the plans to move Kramat Tunggak sounds unrealistic. The women are too weak.

To sit down with sex workers would mean recognizing the needs of prostitutes, dubbed "women without morals" wanita tuna susila.

"Talks between equals" would highlight the importance of the business. The public also seems to expect politicians to back up decent people who do not want to live near prostitutes.

But Nafsiah's idea might be worth trying.

For as long as the city's men need them, the women will keep on coming. We might as well hear what they have to say.