Indonesian city to ban giving money to beggars
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Beggars, street kids who receive money will be punished and people fined for giving cash
A bylaw on the handling of people with social welfare problems is expected to be approved by the beginning of 2014 by the Semarang City Council in Central Java to deal with homeless people including street kids and beggars.
Once approved, the bylaw will fine people for giving money to beggars or street children. Beggars who receive money will also be punished under the bylaw.
A similar bylaw has been implemented by the Jakarta administration.
“The fine may vary between 500,000 rupia [Bt1,320] and 1 million rupiah,” head of the social division at Semarang City Social Welfare, Youth and Sports Agency, Hengky Suherdiyono, said recently.
Apart from that, the city administration would also provide rehabilitation programmes for street kids and beggars before sending them back to their respective places of origin, according to Suherdiyono.
Beggars and street kids have long been a problem in Semarang as their number continues to increase. There were some 275 of them in 2012, and this figure has increased to 350 this year. Most of them come from neighbouring towns such as Mranggen, Ungaran and Kendal.
Agency head Tri Supriyano said the bylaw would become a legal umbrella for the Semarang city administration to carry out raids on beggars in the city.
“Having no legal umbrella has restricted us in conducting public order raids because we are accused of violating human rights when conducting such measures,” Supriyano said.
Supriyano said his agency had allocated 300 million rupiah to tackle the problem next year, a significant increase compared to this year’s budget of 80 million rupiah.
“We plan to conduct raids more intensively,” Supriyano said.
One challenge that the agency will face once the bylaw is approved and implemented is that it has limited facilities to accommodate those beggars and street kids who are arrested. The existing facility, he said, had always been overcrowded.
“We will ask the Social Affairs Ministry to provide for facilities for rehabilitation purposes,” Supriyano added.
During rehabilitation, beggars and street children would also be given life skills training and provided with working capital to start a business to help them make a living.
“That way they hopefully will no longer be beggars,” said Supriyano, adding that those hailing from outside Semarang would be sent back to their respective hometowns to start new lives.
Separately, Subkhi, a beggar, said he did not know about the deliberated draft bylaw on homeless people. He said he was not afraid of the implementation of the bylaw once it was approved, arguing that being arrested by public-order officers had been a part of his life as a beggar.
He also said it was part of the risks of his “occupation”.
“What else can I do? This has been my occupation. After being arrested [and freed] I will return,” Subkhi said.
He also said that giving life skills training to people like him would be useless, because they can get more income begging than having a decent job. As a beggar, he said, he could earn a minimum of 50,000 rupiah per day.
“At one point I did want to find a job, but it wasn’t easy,” said Subkhi, adding that most beggars would probably come back to the streets after taking part in rehabilitation and training programmes.
