T

he Bandung Social Services Office acknowledged its difficulties in curbing the huge number of beggars and street singers who often disrupt law and order, especially on the weekends, when they come in their droves from Jakarta.

Bandung Social Services Office vice section head Tjutju Surjana said the influx was likely due to the lack of sanctions against those who give money to beggars and street singers, regulated under Bandung city ordinance No. 3/2005 on public order, cleanliness and beauty.

“During weekends, their numbers rise by around 10 percent, evident from their presence at shopping malls and intersections. We easily detect new beggars and street singers because we have registered the ones who usually operate in specific places,” Tjutju said in Bandung on Monday.

The Bandung office has listed 4,821 street children and 5,111 vagrants. They earn a living by begging and singing on the streets, and some of them are scavengers. Article 48 of the bylaw only imposes a Rp 250,000 (US$29) fine against vagrants and beggars operating in public, while those who gather street children for begging and singing are liable to a fine of Rp 50 million. “But the main factor is the giving. If no one were to give money to them, their numbers would immediately decline,” he said, adding they were organized by networks.

Some of the beggars and street children come from poor areas in Bandung regency. “It’s difficult for us to evict them because we are not executors, like the public order police,” he said.

One of the beggars, Atikah, said the influx of beggars from Jakarta to Bandung had become a serious issue because their presence reduced the earnings of those who routinely operated in a given place. As a result, beggars or street singers from outside Bandung were sometimes forcibly evicted from key locations by their Bandung counterparts.

“They [incomers] usually operate in busy places, like malls, but not at intersections where the regulars operate,” said Atikah.

Tjutju said his office annually provided training and repatriated between 100 and 300 beggars and street singers to their places of origin, with funds from the provincial budget.

They are usually returned to areas along the north coast of the province, such as Cirebon, or on the southern coast of Central Java, such as Cilacap and Purwokerto, and even as far as Surabaya in East Java.