'Private police' direct traffic to stay in school amid crisis
'Private police' direct traffic to stay in school amid crisis
By Mehru Jaffer
JAKARTA (JP): One minute they swarm the intersection like a
plague of locusts, waving their hands, whistling, shouting, often
seeming to outnumber the vehicles they pretend to steer.
Next minute they are gone, replaced by uniformed policemen who
orchestrate the fabled traffic jams almost with the finesse of a
musical conductor in comparison. And this cat-and-mouse game
between the police and the swarm goes on unabated on the streets
of Jakarta day after day.
On yet another drive past the same route when the locusts were
back on the road, The Jakarta Post could not help asking one of
them why they had disappeared.
"We dispersed because the police came." To the question,
"Where are the police now?" the teenager added: "They went away
after performing 30 minutes of their duty. We gave them
cigarettes and now they are gone," he grinned, jingling coins in
his closed palm and impatiently fanning his hand to move the car
away.
He added another two hundred-rupiah coins to the day's
collection and looked forward to his next renumeration from the
long line of motorists behind.
However, Mohammad Rosihun, 16, graciously agreed to take a few
minutes off from a busy traffic intersection on Jl. Antasari to
smoke a cigarette and talk a little about what all the screaming
and shouting on the roads is about.
Ever since skyrocketing prices have made even a simple meal
often unavailable to his family of six, he has lived with the
fear he might have to give up studying. But Rosihun is determined
to finish high school, even if it means having to finance his
studies himself.
Over the past three months he has been part of a group of 12
teenagers who spend about three hours a day regulating traffic
and sharing the profit. On a lucky day he earns up to Rp 5,000.
It allows him enough time and money to go to school, feed
himself at least one meal a day and give the change to his two
brothers and a sister.
He is happy that he can help his parents, both shop
attendants, to feed the family during tough economic times. He
can hardly wait to graduate from high school to join the army.
"Yes, a soldier is what I want to be," he said with a faraway
look in his eyes.
No, he is not afraid of the police. Twelve teenagers like him
are registered with the nearby police station to do the job, he
said.
At yet another intersection, the boys are boisterous, a little
more playful than the responsible-looking Rosihun. They strike
film star-like poses as they stand before the camera.
Henry, 20, wants to become a rich business manager.
He is not sure what kind of business he would like to do, just
as long as it would make him rich.
"Don't you want to become a soldier?" elicits the unanimous
chant of: "No ABRI (Armed Forces). Never ABRI. Mega, Mega." The
latter is a reference to opposition figure Megawati
Soekarnoputri.
The group of 25 teenagers aged from 17 to 20 lives in slums
behind the main roads of the city. They go to school sometimes,
and sometimes do not. They stand two at a time at traffic
intersections for periods of 30 minutes. At the end of the day
they share their earnings equally.
There is a loud denial when asked if they ever tried to enrich
themselves by robbing motorists.
The youngest of the traffic directors spotted was an eight-
year-old boy in the Buncit area and the eldest was an unemployed
man of 25.
Aji, Reza, Arman, Hasbi, Bowo and Yusuf are just a few of
thousands of youngsters pouring out of schools and homes onto the
streets, looking for ways to supplement the dwindling income of
their elders. Most of them said they did not really enjoy doing
the job and did not plan to remain on the streets for long.
"Once the economic crisis is over, everything will be all
right. Then I will think of other ways to earn money. Really big
money," said hopeful 19-year-old Yusuf.
Before the economic crisis, most of the boys had one foot on
the ladder which would take them on the climb away from a life in
the slums.
Now they have fallen back into a bottomless pit of extreme
poverty and hopelessness.
The country's miraculous race to affluence in the last few
decades made life stable and comfortable, especially for a
ballooning middle class. All the gains enjoyed in the past have
blown away into thin air since the surprise economic crash
affecting millions.
It has been most cruel to children.
Stephen J. Woodhouse, head of Unicef in Jakarta, has already
noticed the first cases of marasmus, the severe emaciation seen
in the worst African famines. Infant mortality in the country is
expected to jump by 30 percent after it was reduced by two-thirds
in recent decades.
"We could easily lose a whole generation of kids who are being
pulled out of school and put to work. A whole generation of
expectations has vanished," said Scott Guggenheim of the World
Bank.
The government itself estimates that nearly half the nation's
population is unable to afford adequate food, defined as daily
intake of 2,100 calories per person. It is only due to
desperation that all kinds of people have suddenly appeared on
the street looking for ways to make money, sometimes by fair
means and, when the need arises, also by foul.
Obviously, not everyone approves.
A colleague recalled having her fingers twisted as she pulled
down her car window to give money to a youngster regulating
traffic on a Kuningan junction. She suspected she was about to be
robbed.
Shivani Kakar, seven months pregnant, is already uncomfortable
driving around town without having the boys on the road slowing
her down even more.
"I don't really think there is any need for them to be
directing traffic on a clear route from Sudirman to Jl. Rasuna
Said."
Other motorists interviewed said they would be better off in
certain parts of the city without a horde of voices unnecessarily
screaming "Terus, terus," (keep going, keep going) at them.
But they realize that these are difficult times for everyone
and that the youngsters are in genuine need of money. "It is a
more dignified way of asking for money than begging," a
motorcyclist said.
"Once the state and the social workers come up with a better
solution to feed and employ everyone, then we can go back to
being intolerant of the traffic boys," said a driver employed by
an expatriate family.
Police chase beggars, peddlers, vendors, guitarists and now
the traffic boys off the roads because they like to pretend there
are no poor in Jakarta, he said.
The government wants the main roads of Jakarta to remain a
showpiece, free of all "riffraff", he added.
"It could do that in the past. But now it can pretend no
longer. After all there are nearly 20 million unemployed people
in the country. One out of every five workers is already out of
job," it is pointed out.
And as the gap between rich and poor in the city widens,
incidents of lawlessness and robbery can only be expected to go
up.
Crisis or no crisis, Boonboon, a human resource development
expert, has always been grateful to the traffic boys for being at
the Simprug intersection where she must turn toward Permata
Hijau.
"Without them I would be just stuck at the crossing. I would
never reach home or be able to get out of it," she said.