Newcomers get jobs easily despite municipal policy
Newcomers get jobs easily despite municipal policy
JAKARTA (JP): Rumadi, 25, had only been in Jakarta for two
days when he got a job as a construction worker. He receives Rp
7,000 (US$3.04) per day, excluding food and transportation
allowances, which is not bad for someone with no more than an
elementary school education.
Sutriyono, also 25, arrived a week before he started earning
Rp 60,000 a month for helping his relative, Sutini, at her food
stall in the Pondok Indah area. Sutriyono is an elementary school
dropout.
Both Rumadi and Sutriyono are lucky. They found it easy to get
work in the capital although they were newcomers without the
proper documents.
"No, I don't have any of the documents required by the
administration, not even a paper on changing residence from my
village head. Nobody could guarantee me a job here," Rumadi said.
"I got this job through my friend because he is also working
on this project," Rumadi said.
There are many other newcomers who have no sponsors. The
unskilled women who are passed on to people wanting housemaids by
supplier agencies are examples.
Mustapha of the Karya Setiawan agency on Jl. Jend. Suprapto,
East Jakarta, said that most of the newcomers seeking work don't
have the necessary documents other than identification cards.
"It is the brokers who arranged their trips from their
hometowns to Jakarta. I have nothing to do with that," he said.
He has placed at least 30 newcomers as housemaids all over the
city since Idul Fitri holidays last month.
There are 110 agencies in the city, if each agency has placed
30 new servants since the Idul Fitri holidays that means at least
3,300 unsponsored newcomers have found work in the capital.
This reality undermines the administration's efforts to curb
the influx of newcomers.
The administration has been working hard to discourage
unskilled people from moving to Jakarta to seek work by enforcing
a decree stipulating that newcomers must have certain documents
in order to stay in the capital with its population of 19 million
people.
It was estimated that 300,000 newcomers would enter Jakarta
after the Idul Fitri holidays.
Recently the authorities have netted a large number of
newcomers lacking Jakarta IDs and the necessary documents from
their places of origin. They have been sent back to their
hometowns.
The authorities will continue such operations until April.
Outrageous
In 1994, the administration predicted that about 314,900
newcomers would arrive in the city after the Idul Fitri holidays.
Last year it listed 330,000 possible new people and 300,000
possible new job seekers this year.
An official at the city population agency said the predictions
were made based on the expected difference between the number of
people who left the city seven days before Idul Fitri holidays
and the number of people who come into the city within a week
after the holidays.
"Such figures are outrageous because the real growth of the
city's population growth from 1980 to 1990 was only 200,000
people per year," the official, who refused to be named, told The
Jakarta Post.
The City Statistics Office lists the number of newcomers in
Jakarta from 1990 to 1994 as under 100,000 people. In 1990 the
number of newcomers was 87,140 people, 81,885 in 1991, 97,439 in
1992, 70,660 in 1993 and 70,439 in 1994.
Soesila said that the figures announced every year are only
predictions, and that there is no exact count on newcomers.
"It is difficult to get the exact number because there's no
way we can count them unless we conduct extensive research,"
Soesila told.
Soesila Darmoadji, a city administration spokesman, said the
governor himself had predicted that the number would be no more
than 200,000 people this year.
Soesila said the municipality is not overly concerned about
counting the number of newcomers. The most important thing is to
return those who are lacking documents to their hometowns.
(yns/03/04)