Street children who are working on the street every day in Wamena City hold a protest – Jubi
Wamena, Jubi – The Jayawijaya Regional Social Office has listed as many as 600 street children who are working on the street every day in Wamena City and its surrounding areas.
Office chief Marthen Yogobi told reporters on Wednesday (27/1/2016) at Jayawijaya Legislative Council Office that the government should pay attention to the street children because most of them are not from Jayawijaya.
“Based on our record, their number is more than 600 people whose parents are mostly in some other regencies. Therefore, in the future we will try to make coordination with the specific local regencies where the children origin from and try to communicate with social office of extension regencies to handle this case,” he said.
Related to the Street Children Community (kanjal) existed in Jayawijaya, he revealed the social office has not measured some actions to provide assistant or empower them because they have a community group.
Referring to regulation issued by social ministry, the street children are those who stay on the street for 1×24 hours and are not in a group community. Those children are subjected to get assistance from social office.
But if they have a group community, therefore the social office only need to coordinate with the group for further assistance. “We have not yet made coordination with Street Children Community or kanjal, though we have their records. In the future, it would depend on the regional budget, if it allocated budget for street children community, we would execute the program,” he firmly said.
“There’s a budget but it was mostly allocated for our economic empowerment or poor community program. We are just having the capacity building program for street children this year and it would be on trial. Because about two years ago, the Social Office conducted survey on street children at Pasar Misi, Pasar Sinakma, Potikelek, Jalan Irian and Pasar Jibama and recorded their numbers are more than 600 people. And most of their parents are live in the extension regencies,” he added.
The Commission C Chairman of Jayawijaya Legislative Council for education, health and community welfare, Welmina Logo explained the existence of street children in Wamena City and surrounding area is also becoming a concern of parliament’s members.
According to Logo, the Social Office should build an orphanage to accommodate the children who currently live on the street. “Because when they were asked about where is their parents, they might answer their parents live here and they used to get money easily and being ignorance to the school,” she said.
Related to orphanage, Jayawijaya Legislative Council is ready to support this. “We will continue to enforce this to reduce the number of children living on the street that they are actually not the street children because they have parents at home,” she said. (Islami/rom)
