Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Bangka Belitung | Wed, 11/04/2009 2:23 PM
The Belitung administration in Bangka Belitung province, is encouraging scores of children, currently working in traditional tin mines in the regency, to return to school, through the School Operational Assistance (BOS) program.
Under the scorching sun, Siswanto, 17, and his younger brother Suhendi, 15, were busy helping their father Jahidie sift tin from sand at a traditional tin mine in Selingsing village, Manggar, East Belitung.
"I no longer want to attend school because I can buy a motorcycle and the latest cell phone with my own money earned at the tin mine, while an education doesn't promise decent work with huge earnings like this," Siswanto told The Jakarta Post.
The island, on which Siswanto and Suhendi live, is the biggest tin producer in the country.
Both Siswanto and Suhendi dropped out of elementary school preferring to work as tin miners, earning an average Rp 60,000 (US$6) per day, a sum which is more than double that earned working as a farmhand in Java.
To obtain tin, Siswanto and Suhendi work from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.
As well as sifting tin from sand, both of them are also required to dig holes and lift more than 100 kilograms of tin sand daily, and that doesn't include the occupational hazards at work, including frequent landslides.
"I will never stop working in the tin mine because many people on this island got rich and now own more than five cars and luxury homes in Jakarta from this profession," said Siswanto.
Iskamin, 40, a teacher at a Belitung junior high school, which is part of the BOS program, said hundreds of school-age children were currently working in the traditional tin mines.
"These school drop outs are not from poor families. Both of their parents value work over education. They have noticed that many Bangka Belitung university graduates that studied in Jakarta do not find employment when they return to their home villages," said Iskamin.
He added that teachers were forced to approach children at mining sites to encourage them to return to school, and that teachers would sometimes provide private tuition at mining sites to those who had not attended lessons for an extended period.
"We have no other method to keep them at school, however, despite the approach they are mostly still complacent and too lazy to go to school. But we are doing this to ensure they can access their right to education," said Iskamin.
The approach, carried out by Iskamin and a number of other teachers, has yielded results. They have gradually encouraged some children to attend the junior high school open school located in Curucuk village, Badau district in Belitung regency.
The school is currently the only school that is able to retain its 90 students, another school was forced to close four years ago due to the declining number of students.
"The school is only open two days a week. Despite that, 60 percent of the students still truant. The attendance rate is only high during the rainy season when the mines are closed," he said.
Belitung Education Office head Karyadi Sahminan said the entire operational costs of the open school were derived from the BOS program, which had been allocated by the central government since 2005.
"The school also gets funding from the provincial budget for a number of facilities and incentives for teachers so they will continue teaching," said Karyadi.
The Belitung regency administration has set aside Rp 128 billion, or 26 percent of its total spending of Rp 429 billion in 2010 for education.
