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West Jakarta authorities struggle to tackle social ills with arrests
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Beggars in Jakarta (Shutterstock.com/Daxiao Productions)
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n response to residents' complaints about social problems in several areas of West Jakarta, the Social Support, Observation and Control (P3S) taskforce of the West Jakarta Social Affairs Agency, along with personnel of the West Jakarta Military Command, conducted a raid on people considered to have “community-related or social problems” (PMKS) on Friday night.
During the raid, the agency took 17 people into custody. Four of them are reportedly sex workers, the others are buskers, beggars and alleged drug users.
They were taken to the Bina Insan Social House in Kedoya, West Jakarta, to be registered and undergo counseling aimed at keeping them off the streets.
The agency says it is busy day and night monitoring and disciplining people it categorizes as having PMKS, but agency head Surya said some people were playing cat and mouse with the authorities.
He added there were some locations where raids had proven unsuccessful, because information on the measure had been leaked beforehand.
"We will fire our officers if we find out that they have leaked information [about the raid]," he said Saturday, as reported by wartakota.tribunnews.com. (rdi)
