Poorest of the poor pushed to the brink

Poorest of the poor pushed to the brink

Will the poor be able to survive if foreign aid dries up?
Sociologist and coordinator of the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC)
Wardah Hafidz spoke with The Jakarta Post about the lot of
Indonesia's underclass.

Question: If international aid stops, will the urban poor
stand to fare the worst?

Answer: I cannot imagine how much worse it could be. At the
beginning of the crisis, they were shocked when jobs suddenly
vanished and prices rocketed. But one or two years ago they still
had jewelry and electronic goods to sell. All this has gone now,
while there are still no jobs and the value of money is still
low. Jakarta provides the most concrete evidence.

The suggestion that aid should not be stopped because it would
largely affect the urban poor misses the point. If we can't halve
our debts, we should start to reduce them. All the money
corrupted, nonperforming loans... would be equal to the national
budget. With greater debts, the poor bear a larger burden because
there has been no control mechanism against corruption.

Q: What if much of the aid was soft loans?

A: Even so it would take 25 years to 30 years to repay; so far we
have been borrowing to pay back debts. There must be drastic
efforts to make us stop accruing debts. But we've kept on
siphoning off our reserves... just business as usual.

Q: Would the urban poor be more likely to be involved in unrest
like the May 1998 riots amid the current uncertainty?

A: There are extremely poor areas. Some of the people there have
told us they were recruited in incidents of violence and were
paid Rp 15,000 to Rp 30,000. But nobody took care of those who
were injured or killed; some just disappeared. They are urban
squatters and are not recognized as residents by the village
heads and neighborhood chiefs -- they have no identity cards.
They live in dwellings of less than two square meters and make Rp
3,000 to Rp 5,000 a day in jobs like shucking oysters for export.
The areas are densely built up, like in North Jakarta. The
possibility of these people being recruited for violence should
be anticipated.

They would have no choice but to take such offers; this is
also because they live under constant threat, such as of being
evicted. It is those who are a bit better off who will speak up.

Q: What is the prospect of life for the poor?

A: In Jakarta the speaker of the local legislature is now a
military man and so (Governor) Sutiyoso (former Jakarta military
chief) will likely continue to rule... Stronger military role
in Jakarta is a disaster for the urban poor. We are pushing for
an end to the policy for the informal sector which criminalizes
them. Jakarta has been deemed among the most arrogant and most
corrupt provincial administrations. One reason is because those
in power bear arms. Jakarta has always had a governor from the
military because it is considered strategic. Much of the land is
owned by military people. Economically, the future of the poor is
undoubtedly bad; politically there is hope, at least Jakarta's
urban poor will now speak up more on things that affect them. I
choose to be optimistic because access to information is more
open now.

Q: UPC was among those demanding a stop to more safety net funds
while the government promised the World Bank a better control
mechanism. Has there been progress?

A: No, we are now requesting an inspection panel from the World
Bank, which hears complaints from beneficiaries, because nothing
much has happened since the reports were checked.

The government always says the funds should not be stopped
because the poor would suffer. It is their source of corruption
which would stop. Among the bureaucracy there is no sincerity to
help the poor. This led us to believe we could not keep silent
and expect people's fate to change.

Q: What is UPC doing now?

A: This is a momentum for political education. Now UPC helps to
sell subsidized rice at Rp 1,000 per kilogram for 100,000
families in Greater Jakarta. Even this is expensive for many.
They could care less about things like how the state security
bill affects them. We distribute information like copies of the
bill and talk about it. Then they say, we must do what we can and
because we only have large numbers we should go to the streets.

People used to be very suspicious about the distribution of
such information. This fear, the culture of silence, has started
to decrease. An issue like the state security bill affects people
because militarism hits the urban poor first; they are the ones
evicted by soldiers; they are the ones implicated, they are the
ones missing and burned to death in the May riots in which the
military had a hand.

Q: How would you define militarism?

A: It is the increasingly dominant role of the military in
social, economic and political life; the culture of violence, the
tendency to think uniformly and avoiding individual
responsibility. All this will increase if we let the military
take a stronger role. There are now many cases like a clothes
thief was deliberately trampled to death by a mob. Who started
such a culture? (anr)