Back in the old days you have to pay quite dearly to get a softcopy of data like this. Now all you’ve got to do is click and copy, for free. Those who take this for granted must have been born 10 years after me. Me, I’m still amazed by how far we’ve gone from Sinclair Computer, the green monitor, DOS, floppy disc and WordStar.
Anyway beside the data I needed, I also found this data on commuting from the latest SUPAS. No definition given on what BPS considered as ‘commuting’, but the numbers still interest me. Focusing on Jakarta, it is stated that 15% (1.1 million out of 7.4 million) of its population aged 5 and up commute everyday. Unfortunately there’s no one summary comparing the numbers for each province. You have to go one by one and I’m too lazy to do that. But I’m almost pretty sure the percentage is the highest in Indonesia.
From the figures above you can see that there are 36 thousands kids aged 5-9 commuting everyday just for schooling. Why on earth their parents opt for this arrangement? My guess is that these are those who send their kids to favorite schools, be them located far from where they reside. Well, no one can blame them for desiring the best education possible for their kids. But for basic education I’d rather compromise a bit on the quality compare to make them commute on such a tender age. At the end they probably have to spend most of their lifetime traveling on the road, why start now?
Second thing, there are more than 10 thousands kids aged 10-14 who have to commute just for working. As if it is not enough for them to work at such a young age, they have to commute just to get to work. Poor kids.
Now on the second figures above, you can see the distance to the place of activity by age group. Okay, the pictures are improving now since from those 36 thousands kids, most of them go to school located no more than 10 km from their home. Still there are 1,700 kids who have to travel for more than 30 km everyday just to get to the school. Same pattern for kids aged 10-14.
But as you grow older you travel farther. While only 20% of those aged 5-14 travel more than 10 km every day, those in the age group of 15 and up who travel for more than 10 kms every day is 68%. This is quite understandable, as most of the activity is ‘working’. You go where the job is, no matter where.
The sad reality is the poorer populations tend to live farther from the business district; they simply can’t afford to live in the proximity. Since they can’t be too choosy, when their job is located in the business district they have to commute which means extra cost for them.
These last figures show how long those commuters spend to get to the place of activity. Compare these figures with the previous ones. You can see that although there are more than 400,000 people who commute for less than 10 km, only around 300,000 of them spend less than 0.5 hour to travel the distance. Put it simply, around 100,000 of them spend more than 30 minutes just to travel for 10 km, or with a speed of 20 km / hour. That’s snail pace, maybe due to the traffic; I don’t know.
Lastly, check the figures again. There are actually quite a number of kids spend more than an hour everyday just to get to the school! Again, parents, please.
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