Asia Times: Indonesia's working children find no rest


	June 24, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Indonesia's working children find no rest
By Richel Dursin

TANGERANG, Indonesia - Muhammad Ajud, at 16 years old, is stunted in height and has the wrinkled face of a man beyond his age. His shabby physique was the result of years spent at a shoe factory.

For three years now, Ajud has been working at PT Widya Sarana Nusaprima, one of the big factories here in Tangerang, West Java, that manufactures Reebok shoes. The youngest among three children, Ajud was 13 when he was recruited by his elder brother, Zainal Abidin, to work at the shoe factory where he was exposed to dangerous machinery. Ajud works for eight and a half hours a day from Monday to Friday, and receives a weekly pay of 75,000 rupiah (about $9). He gives half of his take-home pay to his parents.

Ajud's mother is a housewife while his father ekes out a living by driving a motorcycle taxi, but his father's earnings are not enough to feed the family. ''I have no choice but to work since we are poor and I could not pursue my studies,'' says Ajud, who only reached elementary level.

Ajud occasionally goes to the factory wearing loose pants - in order to hide the pairs of shoes he steals, because, Ajud says, he and the other child and adult workers are not given pairs of the shoes they make. ''Our employer is stingy. That is why sometimes we filch few pairs of shoes and sell them at a low price,'' confesses Ajud, who began working at the shoe factory in 1997. Inspectors at the shoe factory only check the upper parts of the bodies of the workers every time they go home. ''If we steal we use our minds so we won't be caught,'' says Ajud, one of the estimated 6.5 million children currently working in Indonesia.

Over the past years, the number of child laborers has been increasing in Indonesia. Of the 6.5 million child laborers, around 2.4 million work in the formal sector or in companies. ''More and more Indonesian children are forced to work as a result of the economic crisis,'' says Samidi Adi Martono, director of labor standards and supervision of the manpower ministry.

''The children work mainly because of poverty and social culture. Their parents encourage them to work,'' says Rekson Silaban, director of the international department of the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union. Most parents of the child workers here argue they would stop forcing their children to work if the government could provide them jobs.

Before the economic crisis, the number of working children in Indonesia totalled 2.8 million, according to the non-governmental Education Committee for Indonesian Creative Child Labor Foundation (Kompak), which is providing alternative education to child laborers.

Kompak has four open houses in the industrial areas of Tangerang, Bogor and Bekasi, after learning from the child workers themselves that they need a place to study, play and meet other children. In these open houses, the children take up alternative education for two hours from 6:30 to 8:30pm from Monday to Friday after working. Unlike children who undergo formal schooling, the child laborers at the open houses are taught labor laws, work ethics, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in addition to subjects mandated by the government such as Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, and Pancasila, the state ideology. ''Since they are child workers, they have to know the labor laws and their rights,'' says Kompak executive director Rostyline Munthe. ''We have to devise our own teaching methods because if we follow the methods used in formal education, the children would feel bored.''

Still, most of the working children enrolled at the open houses do not attend the classes regularly because they are forced to work overtime to earn more money. ''The parents think it is better for their children to work in the factories than study at the open houses because they would get much more money,'' Munthe says, adding that the child workers who arrive at the open houses to study are usually tired or overworked.

Working children who cannot attend classes during the week flock to the open houses every Sunday. ''The open houses are full every Sunday,'' says Wasington Siregar, a Kompak staff member who teaches English to the child workers.

Bagriah, 17, who works at PT Kosmindawangi which manufactures shampoo and other products, treks to the open house established in 1993 in Tangerang every Sunday. ''I have no time to study from Monday to Friday since I work during those days from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30pm,'' says Bagriah, who still dreams of reaching senior high school level. On Saturdays, Bagriah, who finished junior high school in 1999, works from 7:30 pm to 12 noon and receives a weekly pay of 100,000 rupiah or $12.50.

Like Ajud, Bagriah, the eldest among three children, works to help her jobless parents. Before working at PT Kosmindawangi since June this year, Bagriah worked from 7am to 5:30pm for three months at PT Widyawangi, a biscuit factory, and got a weekly pay of around 36,000 rupiah or $4.50. ''Our supervisor often got mad at us. He wanted us to make more biscuits even if we were already tired and hungry,'' Bagriah says. Thus, the hundreds of children, mostly dropouts, working at PT Widyawangi nibble the local biscuits that they produce as long as their supervisor does not see them munching. ''Child workers in Indonesia suffer worse conditions than the adults at the workplace because they have no bargaining position,'' Munthe says.

''Companies prefer to hire children because the labor cost is cheap and the children won't protest or stage a strike unlike the adult workers,'' says Dita Indah Sari, chair of the non-governmental National Front for Indonesian Labor Struggle. ''The more child laborers the companies hire, the cheaper they have to pay.''

Under regulations set by the manpower ministry, children or those who are below 18 should not work more than four hours a day, should get permission from their parents before they work, and should get paid at rates equal to that of adult workers even if they work only for four hours daily. ''The children should not also work in dangerous places like in transportation and railway stations. They should not also work at night,'' Martono says.

Beyond national laws, the government has ratified the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182, the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention and Convention 138, and the Minimum Age for Working Children Convention.

Despite the government's many regulations and signing of several conventions, many children still work in hazardous environments such as in fishing and chemical handling companies. Likewise, the firms that hire children do not give special education as required by law to the children. ''Indonesia has ratified many conventions, but it is not implementing them. The ratification was only for international politics,'' says Arist Merdeka Sirait, executive director of the independent National Commission for Child Protection.

Most of the time, the children work over the required four hours and in the evening, with measly pay. ''Law enforcement in Indonesia is very weak. That is our main problem,'' Martono laments. ''Our government knows well about the problem of child labor, but it has an ambivalent attitude addressing it.''

(Inter Press Service)

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