For several months, he was under the care of his eldest brother, a 25-year-old undergraduate student in Semarang, Central Java who temporarily returned home for Ragil and his 20-year-old brother Hakim, also an undergraduate student.

For a moment, Hakim was worried about Ragil's education and his future without parents.

"I was worried whether my brother could continue his education because the money my father left was not that much and would not be enough to fund, for example, private education," Hakim told The Jakarta Post.

"That was why my eldest brother came up with the idea for [Ragil] to apply for [an English course] at 'Kampung Inggris'," Hakim said, referring to Pare district in East Java known as a home to numerous language institutions offering English courses and conversation classes.

Hakim remained thankful that Ragil and himself could also live off their father's pension fund and sometimes donations from neighbors and relatives and friends of their father.

Ragil is among many Indonesian children who have lost their parents to the pandemic, including those far younger than him, such as 10-year-old Vino from East Kalimantan, who attracted national attention.

Vino, who contracted the virus, went into home isolation alone after his pregnant mother died of COVID-19 on July 19 and his father the day after. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo gave Vino cash and a bicycle -- his trademark gift for children -- after the case went viral.

While some COVID-19 orphans can rely on relatives, it is feared that many others have no one to look after them and miss out on government help due to a lack of data.

Missing data

Citing data from the national COVID-19 task force, Social Affairs Minister Tri “Risma” Rismaharini said in a press release on Friday that 11,045 children had been orphaned by the virus as of July 20, when the country's total death tally reached more than 76,000 people.

The ministry's director for child social rehabilitation Kanya Eka Santi, however, told the Post that it was only an estimate, calculated from the number of people who had died from COVID-19 in their productive ages of 19 to 45 because they may have left children behind.

As public pressure mounts, the ministry instructed on Sunday all provincial administrations to speed up data collection on orphaned children aged 17 and below, so it could verify their identities, down to their address, and reach out to them.

But Kanya said only two provinces had reported back to the ministry: East Java, the province with the highest COVID-19 total death toll, at 24,357 by Thursday, and Yogyakarta, which recorded 4,102 total deaths.

Using the data from the local administrations, social workers stationed in East Java under the ministry supervision have so far managed to verify the identities of and give assistance to 5,000 orphaned children, while workers in Yogyakarta have reached out to over 350 children.

The government-sanctioned Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), which serves a watchdog role in how the government protects children, said data management was not supposed to be complicated.

“Health authorities have data on coronavirus deaths [for the social ministry to] check how many people in their productive ages died and collaborate with the Home Ministry's Population and Civil Registration Directorate General to see how many had children based on their family cards,” commissioner Retno Listyiarti said.

Save the Children Indonesia office deputy chief for policy Tata Sudrajat said cases of orphaned children were underreported, particularly since the Delta-fueled second wave of infections brought the death tally to over 113,000 by Thursday.

He estimated close to 17,000 children nationwide had lost one or both parents to the virus.

What the government is doing for the children

Risma said orphans that had been identified by the Social Affairs Ministry would get immediate help through the Social Rehabilitation Assistance Program (Atensi), which covers COVID-19 medicines, PCR tests, vaccination and vitamins, as well as psychological counseling.

She promised to prioritize giving the custody rights to extended families of the orphans. And should this not be possible, she said, the ministry would provide alternative solutions such as foster care, orphanages and adoption.

The Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, meanwhile, has only recently devised protocols to standardize how provincial administrations provide assistance to orphans and collect their data.

“We are also providing education [for the public] on child care and protection, adoption and guardianship,” minister Bintang Puspayoga said on Sunday.

Some local administrations are also taking the initiative to help children orphaned by the pandemic, with authorities in Jakarta and Lamongan in East Java having collected data of these children since last week. Others, like Karawang in West Java and Madiun in East Java, have announced plans to provide scholarships and jobs for these children.

Tata from Save the Children recommended the government conduct a thorough assessment to decide what was best for the children, saying they must first reach out to the closest family members to ensure orphanages are the last option.

“It is the government’s responsibility to think about [the orphans'] custody. Social workers have the ability to confirm whether there is someone in their extended family who can take care of the children, if not, there must be alternative arrangements,” he said.

He also said psychological care for orphans should be part of the immediate response so they could recover from traumatic experiences.

Private-led initiatives

As the government is moving slow in handling the children, civil society groups are picking up the slack.

Save the Children distributes a week’s worth of food and psychosocial support for the children and personal protective equipment for social workers, while a volunteer group runs an online fundraising platform, Kawal Masa Depan, for orphans, who can sign up on their website to receive donations directly.

Kawal Masa Depan has so far received Rp 940 million (US$65,408) in donations from the public since it was launched last week, and has over 300 orphans registered -- each child is set to receive between Rp 1 million and Rp 3 million.

“We have yet to distribute it [to the children] since it has only been four days [since the launch],” volunteer Kalis Mardiasih said on Monday.

International NGO the SOS Children’s village, meanwhile, has taken some COVID-19 orphans into its nine shelters across the country and provided education.

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