Unemployed turn to the streets for a living

Prodita Sabarini ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 10/26/2009 1:42 PM  |  City

Vendor Jamhari, 46, used to work in a fish export company until his workplace went bankrupt during the global financial crisis. Now, he walks around Kota, Jakarta's Old Town, selling cold drinks in plastic cups.

With four children to support in Jakarta, he could not afford to stay unemployed for too long.

So he decided to become a street vendor.

One of the fall-back options for the city's blue-collar workers who lose their jobs is selling goods, food or drinks on the streets.

Some factory workers decide to become part-time street vendors, selling coffee or children's toys, after finishing work in the factory, according to Sarjudin, 30, a vendor in Kota Tua.

Thirty-year-old Sarjudin, who makes and sells bracelets from colorful threads in Kota Tua, said more vendors came to the square in front of Fatahillah Museum (Jakarta History Museum) in the afternoon.

"They come after work and sell glowing lamps, cigarettes or coffee," he said.

"They sell stuff because most of them have families to support and really need the money," Sarjudin said.

Sarjudin has had his share of odd factory jobs.

"I've worked in a candy factory, a wood company, a textile factory and a shoe factory," he said.

He was once a crew on a ship, then started to teach himself woodcarving. He carved miniature sailing ships, and was once employed by the Bahari Museum.

"I used to make handicrafts from wood and also taught students to do handicrafts," he said.

But the program in the Museum was unpopular, and he found himself jobless again.

This time, he decided to go to the streets and put his creative side to use.

He noticed many students wearing colorful bracelets this year.

"The kids call them friendship bracelets," he said.

So he taught himself how to make the bracelets and set up a mobile stall under a tree in Kota Tua.

The colorful bracelets were immediately a hit among students, and soon enough, his corner became one of the favorite hang out places for high school students.

"They come here and try to make their own bracelets. I teach them and let them use my threads to make bracelets," he said.

Although, he added, most of the thread the kids use ends up going to waste, as some students are not able to make bracelets.

He also makes postcards, by cutting and pasting materials such as bamboo on a card.

He describes his style of postcards as the typical Indonesian lifestyle.

"Like rickshaws, rice paddies, horse carriages. That's what foreign tourists like the most," he said.

In Jakarta, one can easily come across the creativity of street vendors.

In Tebet, a seller of ketoprak, Jakarta's famous rice cake and tofu dish, made with ground peanuts and bean sprouts, also sells prepaid cell phone credit.

The ketoprak seller, Toib, said he wanted to earn more money and had managed to understand how the prepaid phone credit system worked.

However, vendors attempts to survive in the city are often not kindly looked upon by disapproving city public officers, who sometimes chase them off in the name of orderliness.

"Sometimes public order officials reprimand us and ask us to move somewhere else," Sarjudin said.

A 2008 bylaw on public order forbids, among other things, street vendors from plying their trade on sidewalks, pedestrian bridges and other public spaces without permission from the governor.

But urban experts have argued that street vendors are part of Jakarta and that urban planning should be carried out with vendors in mind.

The vendors are often subject to raids on public order.

Despite the harassment, Jamhari said he would continue to come back and sell his cold drinks.

"This is what I have to do for a living," he said.

"I can support my family this way," he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier this year said the number of street vendors was likely to shoot up as the impact of the global economic crisis was felt across Indonesia.

Therefore, he said, people turning to the streets to make a living had to be treated appropriately.

He urged all local administrative leaders to avoid forcefully evicting street vendors when implementing spatial planning improvements.

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