Child labor nonexistent?

The other day I was fortunate enough to see a foreign television program about the plight of child workers in several developing countries and came to the same conclusion as the commentator that child labor is a manifestation of modern slavery as a result of poverty and backwardness, among other things. Most of these children, aged between six and 17, were forced to quit school in order to survive in the slums of big cities.

A number of international organizations, including United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), are working hard to combat child labor in less developed countries. Though illegal, the practice is rife because there is a constant demand for cheap labor, or rather child labor. In general, extreme poverty forces many children and their parents to accept a condition virtually the same as child slavery, according to the television report.

In Indonesia, child slavery is officially nonexistent, or rather not recognized, but child labor is everywhere to be found. These children, mostly from poor rural areas, who roam the streets in big cities and beg at busy and dangerous intersections, I believe , belong to this unfortunate group.

A report from Malang, East Java, that a schoolboy attempted to kill himself by hanging because his family could not afford to pay a school fee (not the only case), is another reflection of the slavery conditions in which he lived. In theory, Indonesian children are guaranteed a free education by the Constitution, which is constantly mentioned by the media and echoed by many politicians, but to no avail.

I suspect, therefore, that child labor and thus child slavery in whatever form does still exist in this country, which in practice benefits the big factories and plantation owners, like elsewhere in Asia, South America and Africa. I also suspect that the government is too busy dealing with territorial disputes and the problem of women migrant workers to care about child labor.

But surely no democratic society would allow child labor or child slavery to flourish when it has professed to alleviate poverty. In this respect, the National Commission for Child Protection should shed more light on the issue of child labor in this country.

GANDHI SUKARDI, Jakarta