Lack of documentation makes it hard for poor parents to enroll kids

Impoverished residents tend to have citizenship documentation issues that make it difficult to enroll their children in school.

Parents are required to provide three documents to register their children for school: a birth certificate, a citizen identification card and a family card. Most low-income parents are only able to show one of these three required documents.

Some parents, like 42-year-old Santani from Koja, North Jakarta, had to seek assistance from the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) in order to be able to enroll their children.

"All I want is for my kids to be able to go to school so they can be smart, not like me," Santani said, as quoted by kompas.com.

Komnas PA said it had reported this problem to the government as the Jakarta city administration was not doing anything about it. (png/iwa)