Arientha Primanita & Zaky Pawas – The Jakarta city administration has been forced to drop a controversial plan to stage raids to catch street children and subject them to physical examinations for evidence of sexual abuse, saying on Thursday that it will adopt a softer, more persuasive approach.

Budi Hardjo, head of the city's Social Affairs Agency, backtracked on comments to the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday in which he said that children caught in a citywide dragnet in cooperation with the police, the Jakarta Health Agency and the Ministry of Social Affairs would be given "rectal examinations for indications of sodomy."

"People misunderstood the program and the intentions of the joint team, degrading the program even though it had good intentions. Bekasi conducted the raids first, and people assumed that we would use the same methods," he said on Thursday, referring to Jakarta's satellite city in West Java.

The U-turn is an embarrassment to authorities, who stand accused of hatching an ill-conceived strategy to assure the public they weren't neglecting the city's street children – estimated at well over 4,000 – in the wake of the recent confession by alleged serial killer Bayquni, aka Babe, that he had raped and killed at least 10 young boys.

Following an outcry from the public and activists, Harry Hikmat, director of child social services at the Ministry of Social Affairs, said the plan to have the capital free of street children by next year would no longer include police raids on their known hangouts.

He also said the ministry was cooperating with local authorities, including in Jakarta, on the street children issue.

"The method was never meant to be a raid, we know that it's a term used for crime," Harry told a news conference. "We will first do assessments to learn who they are, their backgrounds and their experiences during their lives on the streets."

The Jakarta Social Affairs Agency will collect data on street children and beggars until Feb. ary 19, he said, which will be followed by visits from social workers. "The social workers will go to the streets and [homeless] shelters to have persuasive conversations with the children to get to know them personally," Harry said, adding that the program will run continually.

The results of the assessments will be used to help form national and regional policies on child protection, as well as new programs to get children off the streets. The interviews will also find out whether the children have been molested or abused while working or living on the streets, he said.