A number of sex workers returned to the street after undergoing a rehabilitation program at Bina Karya Wanita Harapan Mulia rehabilitation center in Kedoya, West Jakarta.

The center reported that 20 per cent of the 292 women who joined the program last year had been in the center's program frequently.

Eight of them had even been arrested four times.

"I met one of them in Jatinegara plying her old trade on my way home the day she was released," T. Syahrul, an official at the center, said Wednesday.

He added the woman told him she could not return home because her family at her village expected her to earn an income.

Most of the sex workers that come to the center, Syahrul said, were caught in operations by public order officers and brought to social institutions like the center.

The city social services agency has two other rehabilitation centers for prostitutes, Ceger 01 and Ceger 02, both located in East Jakarta.

In the program, the sex workers learn vocational skills such as sewing, cooking and hairdressing.

They are also required to attend regular religious sermons and do physical exercises.

After six months of training, they are released from the center.

The social services agency helps send them back to their families in their hometowns by providing them with train tickets.

Although they left equipped with new skills, Syahrul expressed doubts they could find jobs due to the high unemployment rate.

"They can be released and are then caught again sometime in the next two years," he said.

The center's data showed half of the women who entered last year's rehabilitation program had between one and two years' experience as sex workers while the rest had been sex workers for three or more years.

Only 12 per cent were senior high school graduates, 31 per cent were junior high school graduates and 51 per cent had completed only an elementary education. The remaining 6 per cent were illiterate.
In 2008, 149 sex workers entered the rehabilitation program at Kedoya. (lnd)