PEDULI ANAK FOUNDATION & SOCIAL AGENCY TO SURVEY STREET CHILDREN IN LOMBOK (Translated from Lombok Post, Friday, 17 April 2009, “YPA-Disos Survei Anjal”)

MATARAM, 17 April 2009 – The growing number of street children encourages the Peduli Anak Foundation (YPA) in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) to make a breakthrough.

Recently, YPA cooperated with the Government of NTB and the city government of Mataram to deal with street children.

Khalid Isnulwadi, the Head of YPA, said to Lombok Post yesterday (16/4) that this cooperation starts with determining the criteria of street children. Those who will be under the YPA care are waifs and sexually and physically abused street children.

On the other hand, the government will take care of street children who still have parents and children who actually choose to roam the streets.

The initial program of this cooperation is to survey the number and criteria of street children. “Today (Yesterday, Red) we started the survey. For the first stage, this month we are planning to do it three times a week. The result of the survey will be available next month,” explained Khalid.

Furthermore, this street children survey is a program conducted in cooperation with the Social Agency of NTB.

The Head of the Social Agency of NTB, Drs. Bachrudin, stated that the government is responsible for providing protection to promote child’s growth. “Children who require special protection include those who perform risky jobs in which endangering their safety. They also have almost no spare time to live and play as kids, that is the basic rights for all children.”

He also added that the government had actually generated several programs before, however those programs tended to be sporadic and poorly executed.

Moreover, parents’ awareness towards children protection is relatively low. “That’s why we decided to work together with YPA in implementing the boarding house approach,” said Bachrudin.

The boarding house would be the last resort for when the parents are no longer able to provide protection for their children.

However, Bachrudin added that in the concept of the development of social welfare, family is the first and important people who can give children protection. “But sometimes the family fails to perform that task and this is when we implement the boarding house concept,” Bachrudin said.

He also admitted that such program wouldn’t run smoothly without support from other related government institutions.

Samsul Hidayat, a law consultant at YPA, hoped that the government and YPA would share vision and mission in reducing the number of street children.