TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Poverty Watch: Catch 22 for Cilacap's fishermen
Fish auction facilities, under the commission of local cooperatives in Cilacap, Central Java, have failed to lure fishermen away from unofficial loan providers, known locally as juragan, despite the often unfair conditions placed on them
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Fish auction facilities, under the commission of local cooperatives in Cilacap, Central Java, have failed to lure fishermen away from unofficial loan providers, known locally as juragan, despite the often unfair conditions placed on them.
The fishermen have continued to sell their catches directly to the juragan, who usually also own the boats.
As a result, fish auction facilities, which should have acted as fish trade centers, have become idle.
Leader of the Cilacap chapter of the Indonesian Fishermen's Association (HSNI), Atas Munandar, told The Jakarta Post that the fish trading method has been in place for generations and would be hard to abolish.
"The system has it's positive as well as negative sides," Atas said.
The positive, according to Atas, is that fishermen are able to easily obtain much needed loans from the juragan because of the casual nature of the lending, which relies on trust.
"However, on the negative side, fishermen never know the real price of their catches. They must follow what the boat owners say and accept any amount of earnings," Atas said.
Atas added that, because of this problem, poverty prevails among fishermen; 90 percent of the approximately 35,000 fishermen in Cilacap live in absolute poverty.
"The fishermen should sell their catch through the available fish auction houses, so they can establish clear price standards," Atas said.
He added however, that virtually all seven auction facilities in Cilacap lay dormant.
"But I don't blame the fishermen, because the auction facilities can not meet all the fishermen's needs, such as lending capital, so they have to rely on the unscrupulous middlemen.
"It's actually a classic problem, but the ones on the losing end are the fishermen. I've conveyed this matter to every relevant official up to the minister's level but have not achieved anything so far. The cooperatives set up by the Cilacap mayoralty are ineffective because they cannot meet the fishermen's needs," Atas said.
Fishermen say they can not do anything about the middlemen determining the fish prices.
"Actually, I'm sad because I never receive earnings according to what I've yielded. But what else can I do, I owe them debts," Marno, 29, a fisherman in Cilacap told the Post.
Marno, who works under a boat owner, said his catch is divided equally among crew members and the boat's owner, who then requires them to sell the catch to an appointed middlemen. "If I disobey him, I won't be allowed to use his boat again," Marno said.
Another fisherman Dimin, 40, opined that fishermen will never lead decent lives. "The ones who get rich are boat owners and middlemen. We, who toil under the scorching sun, will be poor eternally," he said, adding that fish auction facilities should have been able to buy fish from them at Rp 7,000 per kilogram, instead of the middlemen's maximum price of Rp 2,500 per kilogram.
