Fewer Tips For Asia's Traffic Helpers

JAKARTA, Indonesia-A hallmark of Indonesian daily life is facing extinction.

For decades, a slice of this country's 280 million people have made a buck off its infamous traffic. Men and women stand in the street and help cars make turns, in exchange for tips of a few cents handed out the window.t the days are numbered for these unofficial traffic controllers. Indonesians are increasingly forgoing cash in favor of smartphone payments, leaving less change around for traffic directors such as Azis Riyansyah. He said that a couple of years ago, he earned the equivalent of $16 to $18 daily. Now it's $12 a day and going down.

"There is no small money for small people any more," he said.

These ubiquitous freelancers are called pak ogah, after a children's TV character who does odd jobs for money. There is no official tally. Tolerated but not beloved by the government, they try to get by in a country where begging is illegal.

As Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous nation, grew wealthier in recent decades, people bought more cars.

But the road network didn't keep pace. Congestion is one reason why the government is moving its capital from Jakarta to Nusantara, a new city on another island.

The gridlock in Jakarta, a city of 11 million people, perennially ranks among the world's worst.

The traffic controllers once had cousins known as car jockeys. When Jakarta required vehicles to carry at least three people to access major roads, hitchhikers-for-hire solicited solo drivers willing to pay them a dollar to come along for the ride. Car jockeys disappeared after 2016, when Jakarta scrapped the carpooling system.

The traffic directors remained throughout Indonesia.

Whether they actually eased gridlock was the subject of a 2020 study in the city of Yogyakarta, which tracked how long it took cars to make turns when they were present versus when they were absent. The result: The pak ogah shaved off only two seconds per turn.

One bottleneck, said Muhammad Zudhy Irawan, a trafficmanagement professor at Gadjah Mada University who coauthored the study, is that "drivers need to slow down to pay the pak ogah." He said their main contribution is reducing collisions.

Their livelihoods became endangered in 2019, when the government began promoting payments based on scanning QR codes with smartphones. Adoption recently boomed in Jakarta, with QR codes omnipresent at even street stalls.

If scanning a QR code in a restaurant is a hassle, imagine scanning one from a moving vehicle while making a U-turn.

"It would create more traffic," said Leffan, a 45-year-old pak ogah in Jakarta. Leffan, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, said his income has shrunk 5% to 10%, to about $11 a day.

Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, President Prabowo Subianto's digitalization adviser, understands the pak ogah's fate.

"Soon there will be no more," he said. But before that day comes, he said, the government will help them find jobs, just as it has aided the impoverished in coastal areas by supporting seaweed farming.

Indonesia's future must be cashless, Luhut said, to help increase transparency and reduce bribery.

Digital payments are already helping Jakartans. After Anisyah added a QR code to her snack cart in 2023, daily sales increased by 50% to 100%, to between $9 and $12.

But in the intersection in front of her is one loser of the cashless economy: her trafficcontroller brother Azis. One issue is Azis lacks his own phone.

He, his wife, their 18-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter share two devices among them.

They live in a two-room bungalow with four others: his wife's brother and three nephews. There are only three mattresses, so five people sleep on the floor.

On a recent night, the 39year-old Azis instead slept on a bench next to his sister's snack cart, in part to ensure he could start work early. He rose at 5 a.m. and directed traffic until he earned enough for breakfast at a food stall: 4,000 rupiah for instant coffee and 2,500 rupiah for a single cigarette.

It took 15 minutes to earn the sum, worth 41 cents. Then he rested until his official shift. He shares this intersection with 19 other pak ogah, typically working three hourlong shifts every other day.

At 12:30 p.m. sharp, he and his partner, Stenly, stepped into the gridlock. Stenly stopped oncoming traffic while Azis collected tips at the U-turn.

In the first 10 minutes, Azis waved through 52 cars or trucks. Only 22, or 42%, handed him a bill or coin. No motorbiker offered money.

Two other pak ogah relieved Azis and Stenly at exactly 1:30 p.m. Azis emptied his pockets on the curb and tallied the haul: 100,000 rupiah. He and Stenly each took 50,000 rupiah, about $3.12.

A couple of years ago, the lunchtime shift netted him 80,000 rupiah, roughly $5. "This was not a good day," Azis said.