It Beggars belief!

Sit at any traffic light in Jakarta and within seconds there will be the sound of grains of rice in a water bottle being rattled outside the car window. The beggars are everywhere and despite begging being illegal, it seems the city authorities are powerless in the matter.

However, with Ramadan on hand, the city fathers have ordered a “clampdown on the surge of beggars who flock to capital” during the holy momth.

One official went on record to state:

“On the second day of fasting [Sunday], there were 200 beggars caught in five municipalities,” he said. “This is part of the bylaw enforcement that aims to anticipate the sudden surge in the number of beggars during the fasting month.” 

It has been claimed that that in 2008, there were 7,000 beggars caught in raids during Ramadan. Around 5,000 were placed in social shelters, about 1,100 were sent home and the rest were taken back by their families. 

Under the 2007 bylaw on public order, the city administration bans people from giving money to beggars. It advises the public to channel their alms instead to trusted aid organizations. The bylaw regulates that giving money to beggars is punishable with six months' imprisonment and maximum fines of Rp 20 million. Those caught receiving alms on the street would be sent to a “Social Institution”  in West Jakarta.

The Social Institution is in essence a short time prison, the arrested beggars would sometimes be in the same cells as other petty criminals. Report’s have been made that Public Order Officials locked up a wide range of people, from 3-in-1 jockeys who used to be thugs, to homeless people and sex workers.

The Jakarta Post ran an editorial in June which contained the following quote!

While rules against violators of public order are supposed to be indiscriminate, what catches our attention are most often arrests of roadside vendors, traffic "jockeys", sex workers, squatters or beggars - coincidentally, it seems, all members of the urban poor.

Public order officials have thus earned little respect in their efforts, behaving like thugs in uniforms. A public outcry followed the recent death of a sex worker in Tangerang (just west of the capital) who jumped into a river to avoid a raid. And the latest uproar followed a raid on vendors in Surabaya during which a pot of boiling water belonging to a noodle vendor was overturned, fatally scalding the vendor's infant child.

Despite angry calls to dismantle the entire institution of public order, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo says it is still needed, to help uphold city rules.

There are however moments of amusement. A few years ago a raid on beggars at the Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta, turned ugly when dozens of people inside the mosque chased the officers away, hurling plastic bottles and chairs at them. Seeing the public order officers approaching the mosque at about 11:30 p.m., many of the beggars ran inside the mosque.

This interrupted a Koran reading, the participants of which thought the officers had come to check their identity cards. The participants put down their Korans and gave chase to the officers.

It seems this year that the city is serious, I’ll keep my camera in the hope of seeing a mob of the faithful in full flight after the city officials………..