Child domestic helpers at risk of abuse: Report
Child domestic helpers at risk of abuse: Report
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Hundreds of thousands of young girls employed as domestic helpers
in Indonesia are at risk of physical and sexual abuse, much of it
due to lack of legal protection from the state.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in its latest
report unveiled on Monday that the children, aged between 12 and
15 years old, work 14 to 18 hours per day, seven days a week from
4 a.m. to 10 p.m. with employers who often subjected them to
physical and sexual threats.
Indonesia enacted child protection laws in 2002 that requires
the government to protect children from economic and sexual
exploitation.
HRW researcher Sahr Muhammed Ally told a media conference that
the Indonesian government had failed to protect young domestic
workers from abuse and exploitation in three ways.
"First, government officials at the national and regional
level consistently deny the widespread abuse of such workers.
Second, Indonesia's national labor laws exclude domestic workers
from receiving minimum wages, proper working hours, rest,
holidays, an employment contract and social security. Third,
there are no effective mechanisms to protect workers in the
informal sector, such as access to the police when exploitation
occurs," she said.
The 74-page report provides an account of the working
conditions of child domestic workers based on 44 interviews with
former and current young domestic helpers in Jakarta, Bekasi,
Pamulang, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surabaya and Medan between
November to December 2004, with assistance from local non-
governmental organizations.
In the report, entitled Always on Call: Abuse and Exploitation
of Child Domestic Workers, HRW said some female workers suffered
beatings, cigarette burns, hot iron burns and imprisonment. Some
beatings even resulted in paralysis and death. Others recounted
tales of sexual harassment and of being raped by their employers.
There are 2.6 million domestic workers in Indonesia, 640,000
of whom are under the age of 18, the International Labor
Organization (ILO) says.
During the conference, National Commission on Human Rights
chairman Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara said that the government
was shirking its responsibility to protect children as evident in
the inadequate enforcement of regulations on children protection
and people's lack of awareness of the issue.
Another panelist, Lita Anggraini of Tjoet Njak Dien, a women's
organization, recounted a case in Surabaya as an example of the
lack of protection that the law gives to young female domestic
helpers.
The Surabaya District Court sentenced an employer to four
years in jail in 2001 for violence that left one young household
helper dead and four others injured. The employer appealed the
conviction and was granted a two-year reduction in the sentence
by the provincial court, and was then released on bail by the
Supreme Court.
The same employer is now standing trial for another case of
abuse of domestic helpers that took place last February.
HRW urged the government to amend existing labor laws in order
to provide domestic workers with basic labor rights, such as
written contracts, minimum wages, an eight-hour work day, and to
strictly enforce the minimum age of 15 for all employment sectors
as well as giving child workers access to secondary education.
The rights body also demanded that the government and the
House of Representatives take steps to prevent children under 18
from leaving the country to work overseas. (004)