Jakarta – Efforts in Indonesia to ease chronic traffic jams in the teeming capital Jakarta are boosting one of the city's more curious professions – car jockeys.

But don't think horses and high stakes. Eni and her two-year-old son spend six hours a day riding in strangers' cars, playing a daily game of cat and mouse with traffic wardens.

Thousands of Jakarta's poor have become paid passengers helping their wealthier countrymen beat government car-pooling regulations. Their typical dash is only a few hundred yards, for which they might earn 4000 rupiah (70 cents).

In the world's fourth-most populous country, where 40 million people out of the 210 million population are unemployed or underemployed, any job is a good one and traffic has become an industry.

In the early 1990s, Jakarta authorities closed some of the city's busiest roads to cars carrying less than three people for four hours during the peak morning period, giving birth to the jockey, a term now firmly entrenched in Jakarta slang.

Grappling with worsening traffic as the economy recovers from the Asian economic meltdown of the late 1990s, a new multimillion dollar bus service was introduced in January. To encourage users, the car pool policy was extended to cover three hours in the evening along its route.

Every day at 7am and again at 4pm, Roni takes up a position on a road just off one of the city's busiest traffic circles where he rents himself out to motorists.

Along a short stretch of road, more than a dozen like him stand for hours waving at passing cars. Some strum guitars, some read comics, while others keep an eye out for the police.

"I jump into people's cars and run back after being dropped off," explains the 13-year-old, wearing filthy jeans and a torn yellow T-shirt.

Roni says he can make the equivalent of $NZ6 to $7 a day, sometimes more. He says it's a good job, despite the risk of arrest, incarceration and rehabilitation at a series of social centers dotted around the city where many jockeys remain locked up until relatives show up and pay for their release.

City officials say dozens of jockeys are detained every day. "In the first day of the new bus service we arrested 40 jockeys. We bring them to a social center to re-educate and give them understanding, because we perceive this as a social problem not criminal," says Muhayat, a spokesman for the city.

"But in reality there are regulations on this kind of offense, which could carry a maximum penalty of five million rupiah ($NZ865) of fines or three months in prison."

Baby bargain

Eni and her son stake out a patch close to the plush Sogo department store, its basement parking lot swallowing and spewing out a constant stream of luxury cars into the traffic.

"It's good for me because they have to pay something for the baby, and they get two people in one go. But it makes it harder to run away when the wardens come," she says. Eni says she brings along the child most days, but she'll lend it to other female jockeys wanting to earn a little more.

Whole communities in this tropical capital of 10 million eke out a living from the traffic. Apart from thousands of poorly paid police officers manning lucrative choke points on roads and doling out fines, paid on-the-spot in cash, a drive through any central city residential area reveals the extent to which traffic has become a business.

Side streets are congested with cars pushed off the main thoroughfares for much of the day by car-pooling and the new busway, which has taken over one lane from roads on its route.

At sweltering intersections, up to a dozen people wander between cars selling everything from chilled water and snacks to cigarettes and newspapers.

For small change, thousands of boys lurk at traffic lights around the city entertaining drivers with rough renditions of Western and local pop songs while strumming broken guitars.

And with nothing to offer, still others help drivers do U-turns, front for countless charities or simply hold out empty soft-drink cups and beg.