Illegal miners, transient merchants thrive amid extortion culture

Let's get straight to the point. There are lots of serious problems in Indonesia today. Anyone trying to solve any of the nation's problems soon realizes they are facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, most of which stem from a hallowed culture of corruption and extortion.

Try to resolve any matter ranging from environmental destruction to illegal trading and you're soon interfering with the vested interests of all kinds of people, such as civil servants, local government officials, security guards, and even police and military personnel.

A lot of the people at the bottom of the rung, the ones who do the dirty work so that officials can extort money from them, are non-permanent migrants. They drift from their poor hometowns to big cities where money can be made, or they head to jungles to participate in rampant illegal mining or logging.

From illegal gold mining in Central Kalimantan province, to street trading in Semarang, Central Java, there are always people who become a source of income for corrupt civil servants seeking to increase their meager salaries.

Central Kalimantan

Today there about 30,000 non-permanent migrants in Central Kalimantan working as illegal gold miners. Although their activity is clearly a violation of the law, they can work without any serious hassles or reprimands from authorities. Most of them even receive capital from local businessmen to start operating, and they can sell their gold on the spot for Rp65,000 (US$6.90) per gram without any difficulties.

In Kapuas regency, there are 2,689 groups of illegal miners. Each group consists of between three to six people. Spread out across an area measuring 2,767 hectares, they work in an untroubled manner, as if they have been granted a working contract from the central and local governments.

In East Kotawaringin regency, there are 2,877 groups of illegal miners operating at a site measuring 1,865 hectares; while South Barito Regency is home to 58 groups of illegal miners. And still hundreds more can be found in other regencies and subdistricts. All of them mining for gold.

Each group finds and sells at least 30 grams of gold per week, thereby earning Rp1.95 million (US$207), of which Rp450,000 (US$48) has to be deducted to pay for "operating costs".

Generally speaking, if each of the 30,000 illegal miners can find 5 grams of gold per week, the total weekly output for the province is 150 kilograms - about 7,800 kilograms annually. A similar scenario can be found in neighboring South Kalimantan.

This raises a few questions. If they are all illegal miners, why doesn't the local government take stern measures to stop them? Why does the local government allow the number of illegal miners to increase? Foreign investors won't want to put their money in a place where there is virtually no legal certainty, especially not when something called "regional autonomy legislation" is about to come into effect.

But the local government just doesn't seem to care. Why? Because there is good cooperation between businessmen, security officials, bureaucrats, the local government and related institutions. Good cooperation is a polite of saying they all get a cut of the profits, so the officials only think about the short-term money to be made and to hell with environmental consequences. Certain governors in some provinces can't wait for regional autonomy to come into effect next year, as they see as a great opportunity to become wealthier through corruption and collusion.

As stated before, most illegal miners get start-up funds from businessmen.

About 50% of the total output from each group of miners goes to the capital owners, i.e., the businessmen, while the other half is split up between the group.

The businessmen of course have to pay tributes to many institutions to make sure there will be no raids on their illegal mining operations.

All of this can be seen by anyone who takes a trip to Kalimantan. But for those of us too busy to get there, the facts were disclosed during a discussion at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry on Jalan Kalibata in South Jakarta yesterday. The speaker describing the illegal mining was Deputy Minister for Population Mobility, Carby Simanjuntak.

Surely one solution to the problem would be to legalize the illegal miners, thereby allowing the local government to impose to an official tax on them and have more money in the state coffers.

Definitely not. If the miners are paying an official tax, corrupt bureaucrats or military personnel can't simply pocket that money. The corrupt people with vested interests will lose out big-time if the illegal mining becomes legalized.

Recent research in Central Kalimantan shows that 69% of the illegal miners are from Java and Madura. An illegal worker can send home between Rp100,000 (US$10.60) to Rp400,000 (US$42.50) every month to his family.

And nearly all of the miners go home once every three months.

The environmental impact is terribly serious because there are thousands of holes, with depths between 4-meters and 9-meters, throughout the mining areas.

Mercury is used in the mining process and some rivers are now contaminated with toxic chemical at a level of 0.0004 milligrams per liter. That might not sound like much, but it's causing serious pollution. There are fears that if the pollution doesn't stop, locals who rely on river water could soon end up having children suffering from birth defects.

Mining also results in deforestation and it will take at least 20 years for regrowth to occur, but only if there is no more mining. A dangerous trend among illegal miners is that they are starting to use cyanide rather than mercury. That's because cyanide can extract up to 80% of gold from ore, while mercury gets only 40% of the gold. The pollution caused by cyanide is for worse than the damage done by mercury.

Asked to comment on the damage and destruction, the illegal miners say that back in their hometowns they would be jobless, so must do whatever work they can find to feed and clothe their families.

Most importantly, the miners say they stay in Kalimantan and continue their work because the local government never tells them to go home.

Semarang

Government statistics show that Semarang city in Central Java was in 1993 home to 290,960 non-permanent migrants. In 1994 the number increased to 40,826, while currently it's at about 35,000. But that's the official data. Many of the non-permanent migrants have not been recorded.

Most of them work in Semarang as sidewalk traders selling vegetables, fruit or other produce from small carts. Others work as prostitutes.

Looking at the social impact, government figures reveal that 8.3% of riots in Semarang are caused by clashes between non-permanent migrants and local thugs. Such clashes occur because the thugs extort money from them or try to steal their goods.

Another 8.3% of the city's riots are caused by clashes between migrants and migrants.

Because most of them sleep at bus shelters, railway stations or on the street, they are highly susceptible to sex abuse, especially females and children. They also risk being murdered or tortured by local thugs.

At rush hours, Semarang's streets are packed with cars. Also on the streets are thousands of vendors' carts, considerably exacerbating the traffic jams.

Common sense would say, tell the police and city authorities to get the carts and traders off the streets. But common sense almost never enters into the equation, especially not in Java, and especially not when thugs and corrupt officials can extort "illegal levies" from the vendors.

In terms of their sexuality, 11.7% of the non-permanent migrants in Semarang regularly copulate with prostitutes.

About 3.4% of the migrants don't visit prostitutes because they have defacto partners, who are usually also migrants. At least 10% of the migrants feel that free sex is not a sin, but on the contrary is a basic need.

Because of their wanton ways, many of them suffer from syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV/AIDS. But the local government has no plans to stem the entry of non-permanent migrants, based on the philosophy that every Indonesian has the right to live and work wherever they want in the country.

Besides that, local thugs who extort money from the migrants, often give payments to officials in order to be able to carry on their activities with impunity. (*)