Jakarta – Marlise Hutagalung, an employee of state-owned transportation company PPD, cried as she asked to meet the transportation minister and the state minister for state enterprises.

"I'm hungry," she said Tuesday, "My salary has not been paid for nine months... my children don't go to school anymore." She represented the anger of thousands of PPD staff and their families, who have been living in Jakarta with no money.

The bus drivers staged a strike Monday and Tuesday, many accompanied by wives, husbands and children. The protests caused severe traffic jams in Jakarta's main streets and halted the operation of the Blok M-Kota route of the TransJakarta busway system, as the protesters used the lane for their bus convoy.

Their cries were answered by the State Minister for State Enterprises Sugiharto and Transportation Minister Hatta Rajasa, who promised to pay eight months' back pay by August 16.

However, for many the damage has already been done. The company's Rp 3.9 billion in losses per month mean some 2,000 PPD drivers are reported to have not been paid for nine months.

A mother lost her child to a preventable illness. Children dropped out of school. Households broke up. Families have become entangled in debt. And they are just a few of the problems the employees have had to deal with.

A wife of a PPD bus driver and mother of two children, Nur, who followed the protest, said Tuesday she did not mind the heat as long as she could send a message to the higher authorities about her family's misery.

She said that her child had bronchitis and needed continuous medical treatment. "We have stopped her treatment because we don't have any money," she said.

Medical treatment has been a serious problem for the families of PPD bus drivers, as the company has been late in paying the state-owned insurance company Jamsostek, causing hospitals to refuse PPD bus drivers' insurance cards.

Ermiyati, wife of bus driver Parisman, said her child had died because they had not been able to afford the hospital.

Children's education has also been a problem. Nur said that her first child could not enter elementary school, because she did not have the money to buy the entrance application form. "I didn't have Rp 100,000 to get the form," she said.

Ina, 42, a mother of five, said that her household could not bear the financial constraints, resulting her child dropping out of junior high school. "My youngest child, who is eight, has not entered elementary school yet, because we just don't have the money," she said.

PPD bus driver Ikyani, who brought his fourth grader son, said he had not been able to pay his three children's school fees for seven months. He said that he already borrowed Rp 5 million to make ends meet.

Nur and Ina said that the general good stores in their neighborhoods had stopped trusting them. "At first stores allowed us to owe them money for goods. Now they do not trust us to pay our debts," Ina said.

Mudasinah, 42, said that her family owed millions of rupiah. "I could not even go home to Bantul (Central Java) to visit my parents. Their house collapsed in the May earthquake."

Ina said many marriages had been ruined as household economies had fallen apart. "Some wives left their husbands after they said they could not feed the family," she said.