Life still a drama for children on mean streets of Jakarta
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"Life is not a (TV) drama, we all have to have meaning in life..." The sentence is the opening line of a poem Suprianto, 14, always recites to survive as a street busker in the city.
Having left his hometown Mojokerto, East Java, in 2000, supplied with the poem written by his late father Zainal Abidin, Suprianto, or Anto for short, and his younger brother Yusuf chose to live by themselves.
They came home last year bringing Rp 200,000 (US$24) only to find out that their father had died of an illness a year earlier.
Along with fellow street children, they sleep in a train depot in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta, after busking from dawn until late into the night everyday. They do know a janitor who tries to care for them. Each day brings a new story.
It was several of these stories eloquently expressed that made Anto the winner of the Street Children's Expression contest held by the non-governmental organization Cahaya Hati Bangsa Foundation on Saturday.
He won the Jakarta Governor's trophy, Rp 500,000 in cash, and books.
He cried soon after he got on stage to receive the prize because "I saw my late father standing next to me ... I will give the prize money to my uncle in Mojokerto to rehabilitate my father's grave".
In accordance with the contest's theme, Why I Became A Street Child and Who Cares About Me, 12 children chosen from a group of 200 street children from Jakarta, most of whom were too nervous to be on the stage alone, shared their hard lives.
One of them, Nova, said that as a busker in the busy area of Blok M bus station, South Jakarta, she often got sexually harassed when she was alone.
Nova and the others are just some of over 9,000 street children in the city, whose number, according to a report by the National Commission on Children Rights (Komnas Anak), has increased since July as more Jakarta children were forced to leave school.
Bearing the stigma of delinquent children, the street children have become a major problem in the city.
Arist Merdeka Sirait, executive director of Komnas Anak, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that the high cost of going to even public schools and the string of evictions around the city often left no other option to the children but to hit the streets to earn money.
"The children don't belong on the street, they are supposed to be at school. But does the administration take care of them? Using the city bylaw No. 11/1988 on public order as a weapon, the officials chase and lock up the street children and further violate the children's rights," he said.