Blind People in Manado Make Living on the Streets

Name: Blind People in Manado Make Living on the Streets
Uploaded: 2022-05-30T04:10:06Z
Duration: 20 min 32 s
Description: Johanes, who was born in Amurang, South Minahasa, sells facial tissues every day from noon to late evening on the street in Manado. He makes around Rp 100,000 each day.

Johanes, who was born in Amurang, South Minahasa, sells facial tissues every day from noon to late evening on the street in Manado. He makes around Rp 100,000 each day.

KRISTIAN OKA PRASETYADI

· 6 minutes read

Of the 126 people with visual impairments recorded in Manado, more than half, or 69 people, make their living on the streets. Some sell facial tissues, peanuts, and chips. For them, leading a decent life is still a long way off.

A light drizzle fell in the North Sulawesi city of Manado almost all day. Johanes Disa (45), who is visually impaired, stood on the curb of Jl. Sam Ratulangi 12, offering merchandise arranged in a basket. "Tissues, tissues, three thousand, tissues," he called out amid the roar of passing vehicles.

Without his knowledge, every now and then, a driver opened their car window to place a Rp 1,000, Rp 2,000, or Rp 5,000 bill in his basket as he passed by. Whenever Johanes sensed that someone had touched his basket, he immediately asked, "Tissues, sir, ma'am?"

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However, most passersby simply gave him money without taking the pack of tissues he was selling. “The items often do not sell well. Even sometimes, they are all unsold, but I can still bring money home," he said with a chuckle when Kompas met him on 22 April 2022.

Johanes, who was born in Amurang, South Minahasa, sells facial tissues every day from noon to late evening on the street in Manado. He makes around Rp 100,000 each day. He spends the income immediately for his family’s basic needs the next day.

Selling facial tissues on the side of the road is hardly appropriate for an honor graduate of higher education like him.

That is Johanes' struggle to support his family. However, he is not proud of this. Selling facial tissues on the side of the road is hardly appropriate for an honor graduate of higher education like him.

“As a graduate of Manado State University, I can be a teacher. However, the fastest way to make money right now is [being a vendor]," he said.

Johanes is actually a nonpermanent teacher at a special needs school in Kamangta village, Minahasa. But his salary of only Rp 300,000 (US$21) per month is not even enough to pay the monthly rent of Rp 350,000 for the semi-permanent house where he and his family live in Paal IV village.

The hardship Johanes experiences is common for most nonpermanent teachers in the country. However, jobs aside from teaching are very limited for him because of his disability. With the certificate he obtained in 1994 from the Tumou Tou Manado Rehabilitation Center for the Blind (SRPCN), the easiest job he could do is on-demand massage service.

However, Johanes has not had a single order from a customer or a massage center until now. In the end, he found a source of living amidst the busy downtown streets of Manado.

"In a [desperate] situation, it is a solution,” said Johanes, who lost his sight to measles when he was two and a half years old.

Looking for a solution

According to the Manado Social and Community Empowerment Office, there are currently 126 people with visual impairments out of a total of 1,437 people with disabilities who are residents of Manado. Out of these, 69 people with visual impairments sell facial tissues, peanuts and chips on the city’s streets to earn a living, like Johanes.

Most have attended social rehabilitation and training workshops to gain additional skills in massage, music, handicrafts and others at the Manado Tumou Tou Center (formerly SRPCN and PSBN). For 50 years since its establishment in 1972, the social rehabilitation center has served blind and visually impaired people in eight provinces in Sulawesi, Maluku, and Papua.

Kamsiaty Rotty, who heads the Manado Tumou Tou Center, said she was concerned that more and more people with visual impairments would be tempted to head to the streets to earn a living.

"The people of Manado are full of love, they like to give. In the end, people with visual impairments call out to each other because they earn large enough incomes on the streets,” Kamsiaty said when Kompas met her on 9 May.

Meanwhile, they also find it difficult to obtain capital for opening their own business.

On the other hand, according to Johanes, visually impaired people are on the roads because they can find no other jobs in the city. They are often ignored in the labor market, even though they have sufficient education or expertise. Meanwhile, they also find it difficult to obtain capital for opening their own business.

Concerned about the condition of visually impaired people who are working as street vendors to earn a living, Kamsiaty hoped that the Manado municipal administration would help them by setting up massage centers for the blind in strategic places. In addition, hotels and restaurants, for example, needed to be encouraged to recruit people with visual impairments as massage therapists or musicians to reduce the number of visually impaired people working informally on the streets.

This is the mandate of Law No. 8/2016 on Persons with Disabilities. Article 53 of the law mandates the government and state- and regionally owned enterprises to have a workforce that comprises at least 2 percent disabled employees. The private sector is obligated to hire disabled employees so they make up at least 1 percent of their workforce.

Separately, Manado Mayor Andrei Angouw said he had tried to support people with visual impairments. In his first year in office, the municipal government collaborated with the Manado Tumou Tou Center to provide vending kiosks in supermarket parking lots for 10 people with visual impairments. However, the program did not succeed because the vendors were reluctant to pay the rent.

Regarding visually impaired street vendors, Andrei said he would try to find a solution. So far, this issue had been difficult to resolve because the public had become used to giving them money. In addition, it

was suspected that visually impaired street vendors didn’t have Manado ID cards, so they had difficulty obtaining personal business loans (KUR), which actually did not require collateral.

He promised to recruit people with visual impairments at the municipal administration and to encourage the private sector to fulfill its obligation.

However, Andrei said he would guarantee the rights of visually impaired people to have decent work, as stipulated in Mayoral Regulation No. 48A/2017 on Empowering Persons with Disabilities. He promised to recruit people with visual impairments at the municipal administration and to encourage the private sector to fulfill its obligation.

A glimmer of hope has also emerged with the issuance of North Sulawesi Provincial Regulation No. 8/2021 on the Protection and Empowerment of Disabled Persons. Amir Liputo, a Prosperous Justice Party lawmaker on Commission III of the North Sulawesi Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), said this regulation gave the DPRD more power, especially in terms of budgeting, to ensure that the provincial government the fulfilled the rights of disabled people.

Until now, visually impaired people have not sensed the "light" to lead a decent life, even though many regulations have been issued on protection and empowerment for the disabled. Various parties must offer solutions and take concrete actions so people with visual impairments no longer need to wait by the side of the road for the mercy of passersby.

(This article was translated by Hendarsyah Tarmizi)

Editor:

NASRULLAH NARA

kompascetak manado north sulawesi amurang manado state university kamangta tumou tou manado rehabilitation center for the blind blind