Scraping by, year after year

Prodita Sabarini ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 07/09/2009 9:18 AM  |  City

One day at a time: Becak driver Syarifudin waits for customers in Koja, North Jakarta. JP/Prodita Sabarini

Becak driver Syarifudin has had to run from the authorities more times than he can count in his life, simply because he is poor. Jakarta’s public order officers have chased him, just for trying to earn a living, since he was in his early teens.

On one recent, sweltering-hot day, Syarifudin sat in his tricycle-rickshaw. His wrinkled, sunburnt skin adds 10 years to his lean, slim, early thirties figure. He went through a string of odd jobs before earning a crust pedaling the colorful, three-wheeled becak — a mode of transport which is officially banned in Jakarta. Syrifudin pedals around the relatively lawless area of Koja, in the city’s north.

“I know that the government does not allow becak to operate, but I need money. Other work, like being a construction worker, comes and goes. It is not a stable job. When there’s no projects then we don’t work and don’t get paid,” he said.

Becaks, the iconic Indonesian pedicabs, were banned in Jakarta in the 1970s. The vehicles confiscated over the years were dumped into Jakarta bay in the late 1990s. A 2007 public order bylaw reinforced the ban.

Syarifudin said that he has been playing cats and dogs with public order officers for riding a becak.

“I get really scared when I see an officer. I come out to the streets around noon, because the officers usually stand by in the mornings,” he said. He rents his becak for Rp 5,000 per day from a becak boss. “I’m very careful not to get caught because the becak is not mine,” he said.

Syarifudin can bare witness to the poor treatment of Jakarta’s poor. Working all his life, trying to get by doing odd jobs, his efforts have been thwarted again and again by the city administration’s rules, which are deemed by civil society groups as being antipoor.

“The governments does not want us to work by riding becak, but they rarely give us any alternative,”
he said.

At thirteen years of age, Syarifudin left his hometown of Purbalingga, Central Java, to come to Jakarta, alone, just a year after he graduated from primary school. His first job was selling cigarettes under the traffic lights in Slipi, West Jakarta.

He came to Jakarta because he wanted to prove himself. “My father was neglectful and was not present for me and my mother. I did not want to burden my single mother,” he said, falling silent and his eyes began to water.

When public order officers raided cigarette sellers in Slipi, Syarifudin ran and took random public minivans in fear, ending up in Ciledug, South Jakarta. It was a journey that would change his life.

“I slept in the market,” he said. “One day, a man felt sorry for me. He woke me up and told me that I can stay at his place,” Syarifudin said. A few months later he worked as a bus driver’s assistant.

In the years to come, he pushed a food cart at the now defunct red light district of Kramat Tunggak.

After the Asian monetary crisis hit Jakarta in 1997, he tried to sell fried rice, but a competitor threatened to kill him if he continue to sell on his “turf”.

“By that time, I was already married with kids. And I thought I shouldn’t die yet. It would be too hard for them if I died. I mean, even alive, our conditions are really bad. But what would happen I was not around? It might be worse,” he said.

Syarifudin lives with his wife and has five children.

Syarifudin said that he has tried returning to Purbalingga to try and make ends meet there. He worked as a laborer in a rice-paddy. “That was not enough for anything. I received Rp 1,500 per day,” he said.

He worked as a coconut picker in Nusakambangan for a couple of years, but quit as the company he worked with changed his wages every time the price fluctuated.

That’s when he decided to return to Jakarta and became a becak driver. “I don’t have any other choice.”

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