The central government has thrown its support behind a religious organization’s moves to declare begging haram , or forbidden, a government official said on Tuesday. But Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Aburizal Bakrie said that although the government was backing the initiative, it was also supporting a plan to rehabilitate them once they’re taken off the streets. Taking note of the Indonesian Council of Ulema’s (MUI) action in Sumenup district, East Java, the government has expressed its willingness to help beggars find jobs and improve the quality of their lives. “We need to endorse moves like the MUI declaring begging haram and the Jakarta government cracking down,” Bakrie told reporters at the Bakrie School of Management at Kuningan. “Begging robs people of their dignity.” Makmur Sanusi, the director general of social services and rehabilitation at the Ministry of Social Affairs, said local administrations needed to work with the central government in coming up with a solution to the problem of begging. He told the Jakarta Globe that the central government has set up a pilot program in Bekasi, near Jakarta, which had taken about 20,000 beggars off the streets by teaching them skills to help them find employment. Makmur said most of the beggers who had gone through the program now had jobs, with some moving to other areas to seek better lives. Makmur said it was impossible to estimate the number of beggars in the country but in a big city, they could number in the tens of thousands. Some areas like Aceh, Bali, Makassar and Palembang already have regulations banning begging but need to publicize these rules better for the sake of public awareness. Makmur said beggars needed to be rounded up regularly. On Tuesday, at least 100 people, mostly homeless beggars, were apprehended during a three-day raid conducted by South Jakarta’s public-order officers. The raids were conducted along street intersections at TB Simatupang, Blok M, Kebayoran Lama, Pasar Minggu, Lebak Bulus and Kebayoran Baru and particularly targeted “part-time,” or seasonal, beggars who were not considered poor. Most of them were detected when they alighted from public utility vehicles at Cilandak on Tuesday. Jurnalis, the chief of South Jakarta’s public order office, said that the beggars failed to show their identity cards. “Most of the seasonal beggars come from West Java,” he said. “They are controlled by a syndicate that drops them off in Jakarta to beg,” Jurnalis said. South Jakarta Mayor Syahrul Effendi said on Tuesday that there was such a syndicate. “We have seen similar things around the Simprug area and Blok M,” he said. In Jakarta, many beggars are controlled by a syndicate to whom they have to give a cut as their “caretakers.” Syahrul said he had asked the supervisors of the public order officers, as well as the Sub-Agency for Mental Development and Social Welfare, to look into the culprits behind the begging syndicates, especially in South Jakarta.
