Andrew Marshall, Jakarta – The air at the Bekasi municipal dump on the eastern fringes of Jakarta is thick with flies and the stench of a million tonnes of garbage. Ferreting among the mounds of stinking debris, their clothes, hands and faces smeared with grime, are hundreds of Indonesian children who should be at school.
Indonesia's new school year began on July 20, but almost half of the country's children failed to turn up. A sudden plunge into deepening poverty has destroyed the chance of an education for millions of children and cast a shadow over the future of the world's fourth most populous nation.
With almost half of Indonesia's 200 million people expected to be living below the poverty line by the end of 1998 as a crippling economic crisis fuels spiralling prices and a collapse in incomes, school is becoming a luxury many cannot afford. For a growing number of children, work is the only way to survive.
At Jakarta intersections choked with exhaust fumes, children as young as four and five weave through the traffic, begging or banging home-made tambourines for money. Some are so small their faces don't reach high enough to look into car windows, and only their outstretched hands can be seen.
In dimly lit nightclubs in the north of the city, girls in their mid-teens can be ordered along with beer and bar snacks. Most are from the poorer villages of central Java. The nightclubs give them accommodation in cramped boarding houses, and take most of the 120,000 rupiah ($9.20) they charge customers for an hour in a back room. The youngest girls are lucky, one bar worker says – they can charge up to 140,000.
Indonesia's working children say they have no choice. "This is normal, I am earning money to support my mother," said an eight-year-old boy who scavenges for tin cans and old plastic bags at the Bekasi garbage dump. "Nobody is supporting me, so I cannot go to school."
He is among around 500 children and 3,000 adults who scavenge at the dump, wearing large baskets on their backs to collect the recyclable scraps buried in the mounds of rotting refuse. "I don't have any money so I cannot attend school," says a 13-year-old scavenger. He earns 40,000 rupiah a week.
School drop-out rate soars
The private Madrasah Nurul Falah school in an impoverished red-light district in central Jakarta provides free education to the area's poorest children. Headmaster Ahmad Shonhaji says more than a quarter of the school's pupils have dropped out over the last year.
"The monetary crisis has had an effect on the children. There are a number of them who have stopped attending school because their families cannot afford it," he said. The same pattern has been repeated across Indonesia, and in some rural areas the situation is even worse.
Education and Culture Minister Juwono Sudarsono told Reuters in an interview the number of eligible children enrolled in school has plunged to 54 percent in the current school year from 78 percent the previous year. "The school year started on July 20 and the final figures are not yet in. I have extended school registration until the second week of September, to give more time for parents who cannot afford the fees to maintain their children in school," he said.
Indonesia's government has launched a three-year rescue programme to try to halt the exodus of pupils from its schools. The Asian Development Bank is providing around $300 million over three years to help fund the scheme, while the World Bank will donate $90 million and bilateral donors $8 million to 10 million, Juwono said. Indonesia will contribute 1.2 trillion rupiah ($93 million).
The scheme will offer annual scholarships of 120,000 rupiah – less than $10 – to selected primary school pupils, 240,000 rupiah to junior secondary high school pupils and 380,000 rupiah to senior high school students. Schools are also being offered block grants to help with maintenance and buying books and equipment.
"We are trying to apply the scholarship schemes to the poorest of the poor – the lowest 20 percent income group, for parents who cannot afford the fees. We will offer a reduction in the fees for those who are more well off," Juwono said.
Counting the cost
But cutting school fees and offering scholarships may prove little disincentive to families planning to pull their children out of school not because of the cost, but because of the amount their children can earn if they are put to work.
The annual scholarship of 120,000 rupiah offered to poorer primary school students counts for little when an eight-year old garbage dump scavenger can earn that amount in three weeks. "Over the past six months there were reports that parents have asked their younger boys and girls to leave school not because they cannot afford the fees but because the children are asked to make ends meet," Juwono said.
Economists say the long-term damage to Indonesia's human capital and international competitiveness could be severe. The humanitarian cost is equally severe – years of progress in eliminating child labour have been reversed in a matter of months, and the country's success in raising literacy rates is also threatened.
"Since the decision to drop out is nearly always irreversible, even a temporary economic crisis can cause a cohort of children to have a lower lifetime education," the World Bank said in a briefing to Indonesia's donors in July. "The real tragedy of the Indonesian crisis is its effects on the poor and vulnerable. In many respects, this crisis has yet to unfold, and its dimensions are likely to be sobering."
[On August 20 Associated Press reported that US companies have air-lifted $1.73 million of medial supplies to Indonesia. The 30-ton shipment will arrive on September 11 and be taken to public hospitals in Jakarta and three other cities. Mark Schlansky, a Boeing Co. executive chair of UPLIFT International, a nonprofit organisation that specializes in medical airlifts said "Investing in people is what this is all about... Medical programs help people stay healthy, and this promotes a growing economy" - James Balowski.]