TUKANG GARENDONG

If you visit Ibuh Market -- the traditional market in Payakumbuh town, Sumatera Barat in the morning; at the first glance, might not have seen a noticeable difference compared to other markets in Indonesia. But when considered more conscientiously, there is one thing that is very typical that one looks at this market in the morning, namely the number of parked motorcycles equipped with a pair of baskets in the back seat. The baskets will be filled with the merchandises of the motorcycles owners in the form of the things for housewives needs in their kitchen everyday, such as meat, fish, dried fish, vegetables, and others. Besides the types of commodities, there are also baskets filled with various foods like cookies, crackers, fruits, and others. Payakumbuh town community whose population only around 100,000 people call this motorcyclist community with Tukang Garendong.

       There are several things that support the proliferation of this economic enterprise development in Payakumbuh: 

• The Residents of this town are motorist community in where almost all of her population aged 12 and older can ride motorcycles, even many parents in this town have trained their children whose ages around 7 to control the vehicles when they ride them (the evidence for this matter is, one of the National Kid Crosser of Indonesia comes from this town). And it is not a strange thing in this town, if in one family consisting of five persons; father, mother and three children; they also have five motorcycles for each of them. Consequently, the sales of motorcycles is very a promising in this town, especially from the trade marks like Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Bajaj. Although, some other trade marks also can be found among the whole population of the vehicles like KTM, Viar, Garuda, and so forth. 

• Payakumbuh people are dynamic. They like to move anywhere by vehicles in running their jobs or do something to earn money. They had better just go back and forth from their homes to the places where they work if the distance only around 50 kilometres. And motorcycle is the best choice to fulfill this condition, especially the ones whose cylinders capacity between 100 and 125 cc. No matter how, cars also have been owned by quite a lot people in this region; but still motorcycle is the favorite one for them. 

• Given location of Payakumbuh town located on a relatively flat area, causing bicycles to be a fairly effective means of transportation for the people of this town, so the residents of this town are also Bikist society, so never be surprised if the poorest residents of this town, usually have bikes as the means to transport them to go anywhere in the area. And the children since their early ages have been conditioned by their parents to be skillful in cycling, that the sale of bicycles in the urban markets is relatively much higher than the other cities in Sumatera Barat. 

       They are the three facts above that support the proliferation of business growth of this such hawker in Payakumbuh. Bicycle or motorcycle is being part of life that can not be separated from the people of this town, making this effort to rapidly develop after pioneered by several people with bikes. Then arose the idea of having motorcycles to run the business on this one, so that they can reach all areas of the town without spending a lot of power and can carry more goods. Over time, with increasing number of people who glanced at this business, make the employers of garendong began to glance at the areas outside Payakumbuh to peddle their wares. So that eventually they can reach areas that are at a radius of up to 100 kilometers away from Payakumbuh: they have reached all areas of Limo Pulueh Koto regeancy, and some parts of Tanah Datar and Agam regeancy. They, with their motorbikes, are capable of reaching areas that are difficult outposts accessible by four-wheel vehicles. So, in those areas they are quite anticipated each day. 

       There have been hundreds of these such traders in Payakumbuh, that many of those who have got helped with their presence; 

• The first of the most advantaged of the traders are the merchants / retailers / traders / whole sellers who hold their merchandises in Ibuh Market – the traditional market of Payakumbuh, for the tukang garendong are to be their regular customers every day. So some of them have been able to calculate the exact amount of goods which will be sold every day, before they sell them to general public. And it has been estimated that not less than 2,500,000,000 rupiahs trading transaction done in Ibuh Market between these merchants and Tukang Garendong every day.

• The second one is the parking attendants around the market area, with the numerous motorcycles of  the pedlars in the parking location of the market, they already have got a steady income every day. 

• The third parties, of course, the housewives who are lazy to go to market every day but have to cook every day for their families. Besides this, not a few of these housewives who are also specially ordered other merchandises to the hawkers beyond the usual stuff that they usually sell. They just need to wait at home for the coming of this tukang garendong.

• The fourth is the consumers who are in remote areas whose cost financially is not balanced with their groceries or they will spend considerable energy when they go shopping to the market nearest to their residence. Having a trustful motorist hawker, they do not need waste their energy to go to the market just to buy one or two things to cook in their kitchen.

• The fifth is the owner of motorcycle reparation business, whether in term of the maintenance service (reparation) or the selling of motorbike spare parts because the high mobility of the bikers made these concerned men are over average to require for the reparation or replacement of some parts of their vehicles than to those ones who are just having their vehicle to transport back and forth from their homes to their workplace. 

       If we explore further, actually there are many others who take part benefited from the presence of these economic actors on this one. But the parties mentioned above have been enough to reveal the fact that their presence has helped many people and has been improving the economy of Payakumbuh town.

       Furthermore, in selecting the motorbike that will be used for this effort, usually the choice of the motor bikes falls on 100 cc four stroke from a variety of brands, with a thrifty budget considerations that must be spent to buy fuel, although there are also one or two who use the motorcycle that use mixed oil and / or who use a larger cylinder capacity motorbike. 

       Behind all the facts described above, it does not mean the business on this one is without problems, not least these such merchants who sell only a few goods on their garendong (lack of quantity) as it is; the reason why this happens is clear, lack of capital. To obtain a loan from a Bank is clearly not possible, the complicated procedures to get a loan offered by many banks to raise their capital are the main reasons, they could not bear having business with banks. To help them get out of this problem, a large cooperative in Payakumbuh which had once received an award in National Scope (Koperasi PGRI Guru-Guru Payakumbuh Utara) ever offered some opportunity to these traders to join the cooperative and raise their capital (of course via loans to them as Cooperative members), but the offer was not made any of the motorist hawkers to be interested. 

       After being traced, then it is known that this business group is more fun to develop their capital by a system of social gathering; 

• There is purely social gathering, through the collection of amounts of money by a group of certain tukang garendong in certain time period (in exemplification – once in three days, once in a week, once in fifteen days, or once in a month), then they do lotting to distribute the money to those who came out the name of the lot. 

• There is also false social gathering, a system of lending money from someone to the pedlars, in which the pedlars have to pay back the money that they had got 10 – 30% more than the one that they had got in advance before. For example, the vendor wants to borrow money around 3,000,000 million rupiahs, after an agreement between them, the money owner will cut the loan amount requested as "administration money" for 10% (300,000 rupiah); that, the tukang Garendong will only receive 2,700,000 rupiahs. After this, he is demanded to pay the loan installments as much as 10, 11, and even some are 12 installments each week of the initial administration of the money that has been cut. After finishing the installment limit, then the debt is considered settled. Clearly, the motorist pedlars, just get a loan of Rp-, 2.7 million-, but for the repayment of money he must spend between 3 - 3.6 million rupiahs within 10 to 12 weeks. That, the money owner can scratch the benefit 10-30% of each nominal amount of money that he has lent. On one hand, the Moslem community called the practice this financial activity as usury; but on the other side, the money owners argue that the amount of the profits that they have got are just in form of profit sharing. 

       Regardless of how these economic actors expand their businesses, it seems that they do not want to know if they are considered by the government or not, they will continue to trade in their way; peddle their merchandises throughout the corners that await them with their motorbikes ( that most of them were also gotten through credit), and survive to make money as Tukang Garendong.