3.7m domestic workers at risk of forced labor

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Rigid labor contracts are needed to protect up to 3.7 million Indonesian domestic workers, including some two million employed overseas, who are locked up, or exposed, to forced labor, a seminar has concluded.

A discussion on global alliance against forced labor which was held by ILO and participated in by activists, legislators, domestic workers and government officials concluded that while producing legislation on domestic workers, the government and other stakeholders should start campaigning for the use of contracts in the employment of domestic workers to prevent forced labor.

Lita A., the coordinator of the Yogyakarta-based Rumpun Tjoet Njak Dien women's organization, said that the majority of domestic helpers did not get their normative rights and worse still, many were physically abused or raped mainly because of the absence of a contract between them and their employers.

"Domestic helpers are generally employed between 14 hours and 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and are not allowed to communicate with their relatives and fellow workers and are treated as slaves. They are not insured and their monthly wages, which vary from one family to another, are paid once a year," she said.

Ari Sunarijati, an executive of the Confederation of All- Indonesian Workers Union (KSPSI), and Gunawan Slamet, chairman of the House of Representatives Commission IX on labor and social affairs, were of the same opinion that it was high time to acknowledge domestic workers' normative rights after being treated as "second-class citizens" both at home and overseas for years.

Gunawan said his commission would encourage the government to draft a bill that would regulate domestic workers, their legal status and normative rights, which would carry stern punishment for employers who were proven guilty of abusing their domestic helpers.

Ari said the government should comply with the law on migrant workers that requires the government to allow domestic workers to work only in foreign countries that have bilateral agreements with Indonesia. The law also requires foreign employers to sign a strict labor contract with their domestic workers.

"Without a rigid labor contract, the rampant abuse of domestic workers both at home and overseas will go on," she said.

Nurlini Kasri, a deputy to the state minister for women's empowerment, called on non-governmental organizations and international institutions such as the ILO and World Bank, to pay more attention to education to gradually eliminate poverty, which many have said is the root of forced labor.

"Domestic workers, mostly female, work involuntarily because of poverty. They are poor in material wealth, knowledge and information. Therefore, the government should be serious in improving the quality of human resources and give everyone access to at least the elementary and secondary education," she said.

The ILO launched on Wednesday a comprehensive global and regional report on forced labor which estimated that up to one million adults and children were victims of human trafficking in Indonesia and between 2.4 million and 3.7 million Indonesian women were at risk of forced labor because they were migrant workers, domestic workers, or sex workers, who were employed without a work contract.

According to the global report, more than 12.3 million people were locked up and forced to work, generating a massive US$32 billion in profits for those who exploit them. Some 9.5 million of them are in Asia, 1.3 million in Latin America and 920,000 in Africa and the Middle East.