'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.