Lend a helping hand to the poor

The realities of poverty hit me harder than ever this week as I witnessed the impact of poverty in its worst form, when the welfare of children is compromised to the extent that they are in grave danger.

Residents of Jakarta are accustomed to buskers and vendors climbing aboard buses and selling everything -- newspapers, soft drinks, sweets and maps. Buskers play badly tuned guitars to songs they hardly know the words to. Children climb on to buses to beg and sometimes sing a little song or play makeshift instruments.

Somehow this day was different. A little girl, who I would estimate had not reached the age of 10, waited for the bus that I was traveling on, then hauled her little brother of about 3, onto her back, and then onto the bus. It was a little bus and I guess she chose it because she could just about climb aboard with the boy on her back. A larger bus with a higher step might have been impossible to negotiate. His body was outstretched on her back, while she held his wrists with her arms over her shoulders. The boy was, to understate it, poorly clad. He had a T-shirt and nothing more on his body. His sister tried to support him while they stood on the speeding bus. A passenger's hand was offered to the little boy so that she could shake the musical instrument and sing a few words. Several passengers gave some rupiah to the girl. They received more than the average begging child. If the parents' ploy was to give their children maximum poverty credibility, it worked very well indeed.

The bus driver threw the bus through some bends and with great difficulty the child with the toddler made her way to the back of the bus, ready to get off at the next stop. Another hand was offered. The little boy was clearly afraid and protested. The sadness in his eyes is now etched into my memory of the event. It was also plain to see the stress the little girl experienced, as the breadwinner and minder of her little brother. The girl climbed down from the bus and negotiated the traffic on a busy road with her little brother still straddled across her back. Time for action to combat poverty.

The story above is one which depicts everyday life in Jakarta as families try to exist in times of extreme hardship, and where some parents fully exploit their children, sending them to beg, busk and steal. The more hard up the parents make their children look, the more marketable they are, and likely to reach deep into the hearts and pockets of passers-by and occupants of vehicles.

But, it is poverty that is the root cause which has to be tackled and combated whole-heartedly by the government, the United Nations and NGOs. Provision of safety nets is urgently needed for the most disadvantaged in society, providing protection for children and a chance for them to be children, to have access to education, recreation, health and welfare and not to be slaves, breadwinners and scroungers.

My appeal is for the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare and Poverty Eradication Mr. Hamzah Haz, the United Nations and NGOs countrywide to raise the profile of the issue of tackling poverty and deal with it through provisions at both institutional and grassroots levels. Resources need to be made available to integrate and reintegrate the impoverished into society, to give them the helping hand that they need in order to change their situations.

The United Nations' sanctioned day for the Eradication of Poverty on Oct. 17, should not have passed without some hope of changes for those who most need assistance: the desperately poor, the homeless and the destitute -- the worst of society's casualties, so preoccupied with getting together enough money for their next meals, that they can hardly be expected to improve their situations in circumstances of total resourcelessness.

DES PRICE

Jakarta