General News
Indonesia home to 5.4 million abandoned children: minister
Indonesian Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Al Jufri said that there were 5.4 million abandoned children across the country and the number continues to increase, many of them living on the streets, the Jakarta Post reported here on Monday.
Speaking in an occasion at an Islamic Boarding School in Mataram, West Nusatenggara (NTB) province on Sunday, the minister said that of those children, 230,000 were street children who spent either their entire days or several hours of each day on the street.
"The growth in the number of abandoned children is unhealthy because they don't have homes, production and access to education and healthcare," Salim said.
"In Jakarta alone, based on data from the city Social Services Agency, the number of street children is now at 12,000," the minister added.
In Indonesia, children are legally defined as being under the age of 18.
Street children in Indonesia are an unfortunate fallout of the Asian monetary crisis that hit the region in 1997.
Abandoned children are not the only social problems faced by Indonesia, which is also home to 1.6 million disabled people, including 163,000 heavily disabled ones.
Only 17,000 heavily disabled ones are supported by a monthly government allowance of 300,000 rupiah (about 32.6 U.S. dollars), Salim said.
There are also 1.7 million abandoned elderly people between the ages of 60 to 80. Only 10,000 of them received the similar monthly allowance from the state.
"We haven't been able to provide support for more people due to limited funding," the minister said.
He also said that 2.3 million families still live in inadequate houses.
The social conditions of isolated tribal communities in a number of regions were another problem, Salim added.
He said this segment consisted of 225,000 families, only 31 percent of who had access to government-run empowerment programs.
"The number of vulnerable group is significant, including millions of women with economic and social problems," Salim said.
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago country with more than 231 million population living in more than 17,000 islands.
Source: Xinhua
Additional Information
Country: Indonesia
Website: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6919951.html
Email: N/A
Phone: N/A
Contact Person: N/A
Source: Email from: MORI, Soya
When: 15/3/2010
