Jakarta – A woman spends 12 hours a day sitting at a crossroads on Jl. Pramuka, East Jakarta, waiting for people to throw small change from their vehicles. "I came from Brebes four years ago, without knowing what I could do here," said Ngatem, who said that she could not read and had no skills to offer. "I tried applying for a job as a maid, but people always asked me if I could read."
Ngatem explained that the friend who brought her to Jakarta promised to get her a job. "I know that here they will ask me to do the daily shopping in the supermarket. How can I read the labels?" she said, adding that opening a warung was not an option since she had no money to start it with.
Ngatem, a mother of two, is among 10.6 million illiterate women in Indonesia. In Jakarta alone, there are 48,666 illiterate people among a population of 11 million. There are 16,222 illiterates between 10 and 15 years of age, 17,421 between 16 and 24 years and 15,023 between 25 and 44 years.
Sadly, because of her illiteracy, Ngatem is not the only one who breathes the heavily polluted air by the roadside. She brings along her two children, who do basically the same thing as their mother.
Ngatem lives in a squatter area in Pedongkelan, North Jakarta with a scavenger husband who is also illiterate and brings home an average of Rp 200,000 a month.
By sitting at the crossroads and her daughters begging from one car window to another the family's income doubles. "If we can barely afford our daily needs, how can I send my children to school?" she asked.
Ngatem's daughters, Ernawati, nine, and Aisyah, five, have never had the privilege of an education. It is most likely that they will end up as illiterate as their parents and will in the future have difficulties in finding a decent job.
The high incidence of illiteracy in Indonesia was a factor in its ranking in the World Health Organization's Human Development Index being lowered from 110 in 2002 to 112 out of 175 countries in 2003, although it has moved back up this year.
While the provision of basic education has been stated in the Constitution as the government's responsibility, today people see more non-governmental organizations playing a bigger role in the national illiteracy eradication program.
On a national scale, the government literacy program reached only 200,000 people in 2003, up from 57,000 people the previous year. In line with the improvement in the country's Human Development Index, it reached 445,000 illiterates in 2004. In the program, each year Rp 280,000 is allocated to educate an illiterate through government-run sessions and Rp 310,000 for NGO-run classes.
The amount is barely sufficient to cover an average of three sessions a week that the NGOs and volunteers provide. "I have not been paid a single penny since I started teaching Kejar Paket A for local housewives," said 76-year old Insiami Kustiono who has been helping women in Bukit Duri, South Jakarta, with afternoon sessions in her kindergarten.
Since she opened a Kejar Paket A class, a program designed for people who dropped out of school to complete their basic education, in 1987, Insiami has taught more than 100 women in the area.
Suryani, a former student of Insiami who lives near the school, said that she was now able to slowly read the newspaper and fill in her son's registration form from his school. "Bu Kus (Insiami) took us to the malls and bus stations to practice learning words from the banners and buses. I have so much more to see now," Suryani said.
Suryani and her friends, who have never attended school, were lucky to have benefited from the initiative of a local volunteer.