RENTING A CHILD; AN ISSUE

As an Indonesian, I spent my entire life living with Indonesia's exotic cultures, traditions, and its social life. I am a proud Indonesian and I love its people, its heroes, its nature. I learn so much in this country, and its land is a witness of my growth.

Yet, all each country has issues, including Indonesia itself. One of them is poverty, one of the most common issue of all. Poverty creates hunger, thirst, among the citizens, which leads some citizens to beg in metropolitan cities. These beggars came from many different village, some of them are far away.

Truth is, not all beggars beg because they have no job and they have to feed their families. Some beggars beg because they are too lazy to search for a job nor to work hard like everyone else. To make things easier, some of them have tricks, such as renting a toddler to gain people's empathy. When people see the child they carry with them in such humidity or rainy day, they would feel bad for the child and give more money to the beggar, hoping that the beggar would use this money for her child. But the fact is, they use this money for themselves, and it costs around 15.000-25.000 rupiah (around 1.5-2.5 USD) to rent a toddler for a day. It seemed that there's an agent of for beggars from remote areas that carries them to the cities and also, lend a help on child transaction. Because when there's a raid around the place, they know the right place to hide and to run away, and they would work together to stop the raid even if they stated that they didn't know each other. Begging is not a crime and beggars would only have to attend a development program so they have a job that is not disturbing to metropolitan life. Child renting, however, is a crime for taking children's right to have protection and to grow properly.

Child renting happened on streets of some metropolitan areas, where it's dangerous and polluted. And they spend their days with a stranger in such extreme weather and busy streets. Also, notice that some of these children acted calmly even when it's too hot or when it's raining. It is feared that they were using sedative so they won't bother the beggars while working. Sedatives cause many damages that would harm these children while their body is growing.

But even if they did not drugged, this child renting took these innocent children's childhood and their right to grow healthily. They deserve some play time and to be somewhere safe. Busy streets are not the right place for them. It is feared that these children would grow with anger and frustration because they've lost their time to learn and to explore as a child, and they may become abusive later on. And yes, abusive characteristics would cause other criminals and problems that take another innocent victims. This will be endless if we do nothing and keep blaming the government. In every issue, citizens would blame their government assuming that the government are not concern with these conditions. If citizens are a part of the government itself, we, as citizens, should do something before something worst happens.

(And yes, this is one of the factors that makes me think about how ridiculous financial systems are. Too bad, since it is one of the global trend to live, I have to follow it for now. And I my point of view could be wrong...)

Namaste!~