Child laborers get an education

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Previously unable to go to school because of a lack of time and money, dozens of children working in factories in Tangerang are now able to enjoy their right to an education.

The Creative Education Committee for Indonesian Child Laborers (Kompak Indonesia) has provided a mobile school for 50 child workers in Tangerang.

Manned by eight volunteer teachers, the school offers alternative curriculums devised by the Ministry of National Education for elementary school students and junior high school students.

The effort to help the children receive an education has run into a lot of resistance, often from surprising quarters.

Committee executive director Rostymaline Munthe said a lot of the resistance came from the parents of the children.

"Poverty has forced the children to become the backbone of their families. We had to try for a long time to make the parents and the children see the importance of education.

"Most of the parents refused to allow their children to be taken out of the factories to join our mobile classes," she told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.

She said most of the parents were either unemployed or low- paid factory workers.

Munthe acknowledged these mobile classes were unable to offer the children the kind of education they would receive in a formal school.

"But we teach the children about their rights, which we think is one of the most important things these children should know," she said.

The Unesco report on education published last year revealed that as many as 7 percent of Indonesia's 26 million children, or about 1.8 million between the ages of seven and 12, are forced to terminate their elementary school education before they finish their fifth year. The figure places the country at the top of the list of Southeast Asian countries with high elementary school dropout rates.

Indonesia commemorates its National Education Day on May 2 because that was the birth date of a visionary figure for Indonesian education, Ki Hajar Dewantara.

Indonesian law forbids the employment of children under the age of 18. However, there are thousands of children in the country involved in the worst forms of child labor, including forced labor, hazardous work, slavery and the commercial sex industry.

The UN child welfare agency, UNICEF, said earlier this year that one in 12 children in the world, or 352 million children aged 5 to 17, were engaged in some type of work, including those who worked in family homes and on family farms.

Another organization that helps child workers is the Dian Mitra Foundation, which operates in Senen and Mangga Dua, both in Central Jakarta, as well as in Tangerang.

Established in 1993, the foundation initially provided mobile schools for street children and children living in slums.

Cofounder Aulia Erfina said the foundation now had a housing facility for 32 children in Cisoka, Tangerang.

She said the children worked as goat keepers, helpers in rice fields and as car washers.

The car washers, she said, often worked from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.

"The way people value money more than education, especially for girls, has made it harder to motivate the children to study ... they often skip exams because they are too tired or too lazy to study," Aulia said.

Aulia, who began her work in 1983 by teaching beggars to read, said she wanted to help children get off the street and improve their lives.

She said education could provide these children with a better future.

"For example, one of my children is now a firefighter and another has become a public minivan driver. They do not have to go back to the streets. This is what education can do," she said.