City plans crackdown on `cart people'

Nowhere to go: Wawan, 35, sits beside his “mobile home” in Menteng, Central Jakarta. Wawan is one of the city’s many “cartmen” facing the brunt of a crackdown on homeless people launched by the administration ahead of Ramadan.



On a sidewalk in the upmarket suburb of Menteng, Central Jakarta, a woman sitting down next to a leaning cart that serves as a mobile home for her husband and herself, scraped plastic lids off used water cups using a piece of a broken glass. Next to her was a clear plastic bag full of plastic cups she had already cleaned.

"*The plastic cups* need to have the plastic covers removed or we get paid less," said the woman's husband, Wawan.

Wawan and his wife live on the street. They collect trash from garbage bins from houses around Menteng, separating plastics, cardboard and paper, which they later sell to waste tauke (middlemen who collect recyclable waste) who sell it to recycling plants.

The couple play a crucial part in the city's traditional waste management system, whereby residents do not separate their waste before throwing it away.

However, the city administration objects to these people's nomadic lifestyle of sleeping on sidewalks under invisible stars in the Jakarta night sky.

With the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan approaching in late August, municipalities are cracking down on homeless people living out of carts.

The city administration has plans to crack down on people with social welfare problems in 53 areas around the city, before and during Ramadan. The Jakarta Social Welfare Agency estimated that a surge of homeless and beggars would enter the city as Ramadan approached. During Ramadan and up to Idul Fitri day, Muslims commonly give out alms to the poor.

According to the agency, in a month they could net more than 2,000 homeless people from the streets.

West Jakarta administration has started to intensify its crackdown on "cartmen", a term used to refer to homeless trash pickers. Public order officers would sweep through areas such as Cilandak and Kemang in South Jakarta, Tomang in West Jakarta, and around Indonesia Miniature Park in East Jakarta, arresting those it saw violating public order.

"I get scared," Wawan said of the crackdown. Wawan, 35, acknowledged that a lot of people from cities outside Jakarta had come to the capital in hope of getting zakat (alms) from Jakartans.

"I see a lot of new faces every time Ramadan approaches," he said. Wawan himself is not a seasonal trash picker in Jakarta. He has lived in Jakarta since he ran away from his hometown in Bojonegoro, East Java, when he was 14.

During Ramadan, a lot of people donate food for sahur *food to break the fast at dawn* and during fast-breaking times at dusk each day. "But, not only that, a lot of people donate money for zakat as well," he said.

During the month-long fast leading up to Idul Fitri, Wawan could receive up to Rp 300,000 (US$27) from passing cars.

Under the 2007 bylaw on public order, the city administration bans people from giving money to beggars. It advises the public to channel their alms instead to trusted aid organizations. The bylaw regulates that giving money to beggars is punishable with six months' imprisonment and maximum fines of Rp 20 million. Those caught receiving alms on the street would be sent to the Social Institution in Kedoya, West Jakarta.

Public order officers had twice arrested and put Wawan into the Social Institution in Kedoya. "They arrested me and released me a week later when Idul Fitri was approaching. The second time I stayed there for 10 days," Wawan said.

Once Wawan was separated from his wife for weeks after public order officers arrested her. The administration then sent her, along with others, to regional Java. "She was sent to Comal. If you say you were from Central Java, they will send you to Comal, even if that's not your town," Wawan said.

Wawan said in the Kedoya shelter, the arrested beggars would sometimes be in the same cells as other petty criminals.

"A friend of mine was beaten up by fellow inmates because he did not want to give them money," he said, adding that the officers locked up a wide range of people, from 3-in-1 jockeys who used to be thugs, to homeless people and sex workers.

Advocacy group Urban Poor Consortium head Wardah Hafidz said arresting trash pickers violated their rights as citizens whose mobility and work was guaranteed under the 1945 Constitution.

"Forcing them back to their hometowns without offering alternative work would not solve the problem. They will be back," she said.

"The government should provide housing for them if they do not want people living in carts," she said, suggesting that the administration provide healthy shelters, priced reasonably, for circular migrants.