Prolonged economic crisis adds more fuel to the fire

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): Meisi, a toddler in Tasikmalaya, West Java, was killed early December when her neighbor, a food vendor, caused an accident when trying to snatch her earrings to buy food.

Earlier in the year, mothers began replacing costly milk formula with tajin, the water left from cooking rice, which alarmed experts said contained very little nutrients.

The very young, and the sick among poor families, were among the first victims when the crisis hit.

Many among the not-so-poor also braced for the loss of their jobs as relatives and neighbors worked shorter hours or were dismissed. Amid the soaring prices of food and medicine, and the stress accompanying it, people hoped they would not fall sick for fear of not being able to afford treatment, let alone becoming unemployed.

Amid little social insurance, when companies were cutting down on staff the fired employees knew they had to fend for themselves, and people tried to dabble in all sorts of businesses.

As more firms closed down, officials no longer chased street vendors like they used to. Peddling on the streets, or even begging, were still viewed as being better than starving or stealing.

In March, women grouped in the Voice of Concerned Mothers protested over the soaring prices of milk formula and other basic needs in the heart of the capital.

The small group were among the first whose demands reflected the widespread hardships, and student rallies across the country repeated calls to bring prices down.

An unprecedented protest in Surabaya involved physicians, nurses and patients from a state hospital protesting the high prices of food and medicine.

Emergency funds were secured and distribution was entrusted through the National Development Planning Baord, and networks of non-governmental organizations.

The safety net funds of Rp 17.25 trillion, excluding funds from donors, were aimed to support, among others things, education, health services, food subsidies and labor intensive programs.

The government has acknowledged that only 21 percent of the social safety net budget was used during the first half of the fiscal year, mainly because of worries over the possibility of corruption and leakage.

Erna Witoelar, facilitator of the Community Recovery Program consisting of NGOs distributing funds to rural societies, has also expressed fears of leakage. According to the Kontan business tabloid, she questioned credibility of parties distributing the funds and said there were NGOs which were only two days old.

The transfer of funds through state post offices, without passing the bureaucracy so notorious for siphoning off a piece of any amount passing under its nose, was one method which would hopefully ensure all the money reached the needy. But a more clear supervision method is yet to be in place.

Forgotten

The government said it would be effective and efficient -- but was hesitant in making sure which data on poor families should be used, which threatened a delay in meeting urgent needs among millions of people.

Authorities in some areas gave up on waiting for updates on data on poor people as many more people than the designated figures desperately lined up for subsidized rice, which was selling for Rp 1,000 per kilogram.

Reports of undernourished children, to the point of suffering from severe malnutrition, were followed by revelations of other forms of acute nutritional deficiencies -- which had been declared largely eliminated from the country 20 years ago.

Years of hard work of promoting healthy, balanced diets for families were forgotten as parents struggled to meet most basic needs. Eggs, which reached Rp 8,000 per kilogram, were among the foods families cut down on; tempeh, the protein-rich soybean cake, usually relied on by low-income families, was cut into thinner slices by traders hesitant to risk losing customers by raising prices. The once precious sum of Rp 5,000 bought only few vegetables for a family meal.

Scenarios

Health experts took the opportunity to state that breast milk was far better for babies than costly milk formula -- but many mothers, including those working outside the home, could no longer switch back to breast-feeding.

Demographers outlined best and worst scenarios -- with increasing death rates in the worst scenario, partly caused by sheer poverty, and increased births if people neglected costly contraceptives.

Maswar Noerdin, first assistant to the state minister of population, said the worst-case scenario of the prolonged economic crisis and riots in the next five years could bring down participation in family planning programs from 55 percent in 1998 to 47.5 percent by 2003.

The widely quoted "lost generation" of unborn infants is most feared. The few reports of vitamin A deficiency and marasmic kwashiorkor -- the damage of the body's internal organs caused by a diet of high carbohydrate and low protein -- probably were just the tip of the iceberg, experts said.

Now invisible, nutritional deficiency among pregnant women would lead to permanent damage among infants. Also, many families are likely to lack the means to seek medical help for their children.

The alarm was raised by findings of research conducted up to June this year by Helen Keller International. In Central Java, reoccurrences of vitamin A deficiency, indicated by night blindness among children and women, was found. An increase of anemia was also reported.

"Indonesia was declared free of night blindness in 1994 by the WHO (World Health Organization)," Soekirman, a researcher at the National Institute of Sciences said. "So it means that we have to fight this all over again."

One measure taken to address the problem was the start of a Rp 1.37 trillion supplementary food program for pregnant women and children under five in 140 regencies.

The general picture of a country in desperate need of help thwarted international renown achievements into mere nostalgia -- the award for self-sufficiency in rice, the reduction of people living in absolute poverty, elimination of vitamin A deficiency.

Among the sick, kidney patients faced much higher costs in their dialysis treatment, the cost of which reached Rp 282,000 per treatment compared to the previous Rp 130,000 in one hospital in Lampung.

Working children

The plight of millions of working children was also brought to the public's attention. President B.J. Habibie pledged that children should, at least, no longer work on the streets, amid reports of increasing street children and their younger ages.

Habibie wanted to set up boarding homes for street children, but the program has yet to pick up from the hard earned lessons of several non-governmental organizations: that providing halfway homes as an optional place of shelter was a more agreeable option to children who had grown accustomed to the freedom of the streets.

Minister of Education and Culture Juwono Sudarsono had estimated an additional 3.5 million dropouts from elementary to high school level, to the average of three million a year.

About six million children failed to reregister at school in July because their parents could not afford the tuition fees.

Scholarships were provided and campaigns to keep children in school continued vigorously to prevent students dropping out.

In August, the President disclosed that the government had allocated Rp 1.5 trillion to help millions of school children and 500,000 university students in the 1998/1999 fiscal year.

Habibie also noted that only 54 percent of the country's 40 million children (aged between seven and 15) were now in the country's nine-year compulsory education system, compared to 72.26 percent two years ago.

Riots

The crisis contributed to short tempers and a sense that opened shops meant free goods for all. Regardless of speculation that the May riots were organized, many witnessed, for instance, the carefree, even happy faces of the young and old, men and women who hauled toys and other goods from stores into narrow alleys.

The May riots, where the crisis was blamed for the mass looting in which scores were raped and killed in burning stores, turned out to be only the beginning of more unrest which continued as this went to press.

The International Labor Organization estimated a 6.7 million loss of jobs by the middle of the year and many more were expected to join the ranks of the unemployed.

Idle construction workers could not even return to their villages as there was barely enough to eat there.

There was much less hope in the rural areas where harvests had failed due to the drought.

Work in foreign countries became the best resort, but those in despair went by illegal means, only to be repatriated empty- handed.

The Central Bureau of Statistics predicted in July that 48 percent of the population of 202 million, or 95.8 million people, would be living below the poverty line by the end of this year.

By August inflation was running at 60 percent.

The effort to provide subsidize rice at Rp 1,000 per kilogram resulted in rampant profiteering by some officials because of the wide gap between subsidized rice and that of the market price -- and this was one of the factors blamed for the short tempers among the poor.

In Pontianak, West Kalimantan, not enough rice arrived, which led to the rampaging of warehouses believed to hold rice, followed by riots and burning of stores in September.

In Blora, Central Java, more riots broke out over scarce fertilizer in December, and owners were forced to sell them at cheaper prices.

Was there any way that the suffering could have been lessened?

Political and economic analysts have named various causes, from the lack of a sense of crisis to the sheer magnitude of the population, of which many were poor even before the crisis.

A report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) raises the question of whether the social safety net funds could have been spread wider to enable more people to get food for work.

In September, Minister of Manpower Fahmi Idris said he could not address the high unemployment, while the labor intensive program, managed under funds of Rp 3.1 trillion, was aimed to absorb only 1.8 million people.

The ILO report titled The Asian Financial Crisis, the challenge for social policy notes that in the absence of any social protection and strong unions in Indonesia, which might have provided much needed funds, a large part of the safety net program had to be allotted for more urgent basic needs and services rather than for modest wages for work.

Numerous labor strikes have raised claims that workers were arbitrarily dismissed and without compensation.

But a debate on social protection and unions may be too late anyway; the government only ratified the International Convention on the Freedom of Association this year, freeing workers of the dreaded "communist" labeling of every aspiring activist.

If there was one small benefit to come out of the crisis, it may be the signs of solidarity displayed by establishments and individuals. Scores have resorted to charity organizations, and trustful parties to distribute contributions have become most sought after.

Authorities have repeated reminders that the safety net funds are no free ride as some may have thought. Much of the money is to be returned, albeit with low interest in well over 10 years, and will add to the national debt burdened on the next generation.