Toto and Tata should be in school and playing the games that preteen boys play. Instead, they’re spending their days walking Pattaya’s streets scavenging for recyclables and in a temple for food.
Pongsakorn “Tata” Julkratok, 9, and Sornpetch “Toto” Julkratok, 10, are the two youngest of eight children of Nam-oi Julkratok, 43, who doesn’t work and has no money to pay even the electric bill. They all live in a 4,000-baht-a-month house on Soi Jutarat off Thepprasit Road where everyone sweats it out and swats at mosquitos.
On Oct. 2, the boys were spotted on Jomtien Second Road, pushing two old carts filled with bags of bottles and plastic they planned to sell to raise money for the family. After at first refusing to talk to a reporter, the boys reluctantly admitted they walk 10 kilometers a day picking through trash cans for recyclables.
That’s not Toto’s only job: Before he and his brother set out on their hours-long journey, he gets up early to help an older monk at a local temple in exchange for food. And, after he returns from savaging around until 3 p.m. each day, he goes back to work at the temple.
Neither of the boys go to school. At first, they attended a school in Huay Yai, but that’s now too far after the family moved to Pattaya. Then they tried to enroll at Nernplubwan School, but couldn’t begin in the middle of the term. Toto said he’s unsure they can return next year, as he thinks they have to continue to support the family.
For her part, Nam-oi said she was delighted her boys took the initiative to earn money for the family. She doesn’t work, but their father just got a job as security guard, she said. But there still isn’t enough money to support the big family.
Rapeepong, assistant abbot at Boonkanjanaram Temple where Toto works, said they boys are good kids and that the temple tries to help the family where it can.
Toto and Tata dream of being police officers one day, the monk said, but, with no education, their future looks uncertain.
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