Photo: Rindam Jaya military training camp website
There’s no doubt that Jakarta has a serious street kid problem, with child beggars a common sight around the capital. But government leaders say that one of the things that makes it difficult for social services to help street kids is that they’re “nakal” (naughty) and don’t want to go to school or orphanages, preferring the freedom of the streets.
So the latest scheme by the Jakarta Government to get street kids to become disciplined citizens is to send them to military training.
“We’ve had discussions with the Social Office. We want to work with the military. Street children are naughty, they don’t want to be put into orphanages, they don’t want to go to school. So we want to send them to Rindam Jaya (military training camp) for two or three months,” said Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama at City Hall today as quoted by MetroTV.
Ahok said that military training would help street children form character so that they could better their lives and become useful to society.
“(They) would be trained in the formation of character. (The result) might be that we could employ them in the Busway. If we buy thousands of bus, there have to be workers to maintain them. So they could work in the bus garage to maintain the vehicles. They could be paid the minimum wage. It would help them,” the governor said.
It may seem harsh to send street kids for military training in order to toughen the up. But the website for Rindam Jaya makes it look more like a summer camp with rafting, obstacle courses and guns.
However, even if the military training these kids receive isn’t of the grueling and inhumane variety, it’s still unlikely to help them much in the long run if there aren’t more resources given to social service programs that understand their plight and their reasons for being “naughty” while giving them real hope for a better future through long-term education.
