Everyyear, millions of new migrants flood our cities, and every year, the government tries to get rid of them –their houses, their business, their hopes. We take a look at the hardships our brothers and sisters endure – and we start our two reports with this account from Surabaya about Mursinah, who has been scraping a living on Jalan Airlangga for a decade, writes journalist Adi Susilo Wibowo
The clouds that rolled in early that morning hovered above, and their presence kept the usual passerby away from this busy Surabaya streets. Gone are the rickshaws usually parked in front of Airlangga University’s Campus B. On one the sidewalks, three people sit on a wooden bench with packets of rice in their hand, the dry wind providing the soundtrack to their day.
The three are Mursinah, 57, her daughter, and her grand-son, a young thing of only seven years, an unsettling mix of fear and hope. Those not familiar with this are will not know Mursinah. But the students here, and the university staff, as well as the rickshaw drivers and government officials who everyday walk down this thouroughfare – they all know Mursinah. She sells them tea, coffee, rice, and snacks like fired bananas, at prices much cheaper than what campus canteen charges. A packet of rice at the canteen, or at the other streetside vendors, may cost rp. 2,500 per portion. Mursinah happily accepts only rp. 1,300.
Mursinah – or Mak to her friends – has been here for teen years. But recently, as in other cities across Indonesia, people like Mak are regarded as eyesores. Her considerable contribution to the economy is not counted by the government.
Maybe the cliché is true: you don’t miss what you don’t know. So Mak and her friends along Jalan Airlangga have to follow regulations which prohibit street vendors on the sidewalks and city parks. Since February 1st, and every year it seems, Surabaya’s municipal government has regulated all sorts of unregulated activities on the street, from prostitution to street children, to billboards and buildings without permits. Everything that seemed unpleasant to passerby.
Mursinah was ready to go: she had taken down her stall, the fruits of which feed her and her family of four. Her two daughters still depend on her, as does her daughter’s husband, who tries to scrape by a living as rickshaw driver. As she readied the end of her livelihood, she polished her cart with a wet towel. She even began singing a song by rock group Padi.
“Semua tak sama, tak pernah sama….” (it’s never the same, it’s never the same)
The vendors had tried what they can to keep this day at bay. They held discussions, and even held protests to hold off their removal. They took their complaints to parliament, demanding the legislators to rescue them from impoverisment. Surabaya’s street vendors refused to be taken off the streets without an alternative. Poverty and unemployment results in this informal sector, say Rifa’I, the government’s duty to first address the cause. Some demanded that the costs of forcibly tearing down their stalls – some 750 million rupiahs – are given to them instead.
Mak supported all these discussions, although she did not attend them. “Just as long as we are allowed to earn a living,” she says. “I’ll do whatever they tell me, whether it’s using the same tent, contributing to clean-up fund-any-thing at all.”
Mursinah then told a story about her neighbor, who only two weeks earlier had bought a nearby stall for 4 million rupiahs – now her stall would be torn down just like that. Everyday her neighbor can only cry. In East Jakarta, a woman vendor was so distraught that she burned herself alive.
The police warned: we will shoot anyone involved in anarchy.
When they arrived at Mursinah’s site, they meant what they had warned. Stall by stall they took apart. Even the homes of the stall owners were visited by the authorities. But an enterprising activist managed to spare a corner of the canage, and the stalls here were not taken to City Hall for demolition. But for a week, Mursinah and her friends could not use the stalls.
After the sidewalks were swept, however, youths started gathering on streets, getting drunk until morning.
The community began to worry. A few days later, some police officers arrived, and they took the remaining carts and stalls with them. Mursinah had managed to save her stalls, but did not dare use this inheritance from her husband.
Secretly, however, she managed to sell coffee to some regular customers.
One day, at a high-profile event at the university, some students made a stance, proclaiming that the university’s heads had sacrificed the livelihoods of the poor. Mursinah heard the scuffle from a distance, her heart beating with both hope and hopelessness. “What else si there to do,” she said, her head bowed. “They have all the power. They are the government.”
Several weeks later, Mursinah began to trade again, but without her cart. Her grand-son, Rojak, had stopped going to school – Mursinah could no longer afford it. Without har cart, without her tent, Mursinah struggled to survive. When the day was hot, they stood under the trees, weak with axhaustion. When it rained, day or night, Mursinah with her daughters would crouch under a slim piece of plastic.
Street vendors can seem chaotic, so disorganized. The world of thugs, or preman, who both spy for the government and profit from the traders, have a lot to do with this.
According to Rifa’i, vendors’ forcible removal in Margomulyo is tied to these thugs. Initially, the preman tried to inform the local authorities and get the permits that would allow the vendors to stay. Once the permits were issued, they copied them and sold the copies to the vendors. Every vendor who wanted to set up shop at Margomulyo were told to pay 1 million rupiahs. But the permit was apparently not for commercial puposes, but for residence building – and these must be permanent buildings, as sturdy as neighboring residences. So when the permits were expired, they could not tear down the buildings. The vendors insisted that these documents, obtained from the preman, were sufficient to keep them on the land.
The same happened in another area of town. Six preman ask a local landowner for his land to use for street vendors; after the permits were issued, it turned out that the land was not issued for street vendors use, but for residential puposes. When the landowner returned to use the land, residents who had already set up houses there refused to move. They said that they had paid the rights to be there.
At Jalan Tunjungan, the preman who received a permit for street vendors in the area began to extract retribution from them. In some cases, the vendors had to pay the preman rent.
This tax was initially not very much, but when a vendor’s site was deemed profitable, the taxes were hiked up. A site may be taxed up to 1 million rupiahs a month. Better situated vendors could expect to pay 15 million rupiahs a year.
“It’s not only the vendors who are at fault, but the vendors are put on the front lines,” says Rifa’i.
There has to be a solution
Rifa’i says that if the city government were truly serious about dealing with the street vendors, they can obtain from them billions of rupiah per year. There are about 86,000 street vendors in Surabaya today. If these vendors paid as little as 500 rupiah each per day. That’s 1.2 billion rupiahs a year.
The community suggested a number of possibilities, such as relocation to unused sites, or to inside the campus, and even to a shopping mall. It’s the problem, if some vendors were invited to work inside the malls, others will demand the same. And at a discussion held by a number of non-governmental organizations, not a single local legislator showed up.
Instead the government suggest that the vendors operate only during evening hours – an unrealistic solution, say vendors, because there are not many customers at night. The relocation idea is also not realistic; many vendors say they exist because of customers, so they will exist where they can find many of these customers.
A solution? So many discussions have been held, so many dialogues. But a solution is elusive.
Meanwhile, at her spot under the trees, like a caterpillar waiting to metamorphosize into a butterfly, Mursinah waits for her fate. She stares at the sky, hoping for answers. The sky provides none.
pernah dimuat di Majalah Aksara, January-March 2003
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