Jakarta’s Vice Governor-elect Sandiaga Uno won’t officially take office until October, but he’s already coming up with plans to tackle Jakarta’s innumerable problems. The reception to some of his ideas has been decidedly mixed though, such as his Kartu Jomblo Jakarta (Jakarta Singles Card) to help people find spouses and fight the capital’s declining birth rate (which is not actually a thing that is happening) or his dismissal of parking meters for being “not our culture”.
“Our culture” of parking in Jakarta currently involves people having to pay unofficial attendants, often referred to as preman (thugs), for the right to park in their territory. Such preman payments pervade many aspects of Jakarta life, and many people wish that the government could reign in that particular aspect of Jakarta culture.
Well, it seems Sandiaga has another idea to handle the preman problem (besides keeping them employed as parking attendants for organized crime groups).
Speaking in response to the issue of illegal buildings going up and preman retaking control of areas around Kalijodo (the former red light district that was demolished by former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama that is now a family friendly friend park), Sandiaga said the problem was that the thugs didn’t have other work and suggested an employment alternative.
“Actually, it would be very appropriate if these preman were recruited by financial companies as debt collectors,” Sandiaga said in Tamansari, West Jakarta, yesterday as quoted by Kompas.
Sandi said preman would make worthy debt collectors because they are “brave”. He said he hoped the idea would help solve the problem of thuggery in Jakarta.
“They (preman) are brave, consistent, and hopefully the banks will not have problems with managing them,” Sandiaga said.
Yeah, hopefully not. Because some people might say that having banks hire a bunch of street toughs to get people to pay their debts might not be such a great idea.
But surely Sandiaga has thought of that and will inform all of the preman that they can only collect their debts in a polite and law-abiding manner, so it’ll probably totally be fine.
