Child workers will total 5 million by 2008
By T. Sima Gunawan
OSLO (JP): Indonesia will have on its hands the problem of 5 million child workers and other vulnerable children by 2008, a government official said.
Suyono Yahya, secretary to the office of the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, described vulnerable children as those coming from poor families who are likely to also be forced to work for income.
Suyono pointed out that child labor is a reality facing not only Indonesia, but even developed countries such as the United States.
He said on Sunday that Indonesia is applying policies with various approaches for the "virtual" elimination of child labor.
"I call it 'virtual' because child labor can't really be eliminated... no matter how hard the government's effort is to fight it."
Suyono was in Oslo to attend the International Conference on Child Labour.
The International Labour Organization says there are 250 million working children worldwide. In Indonesia, the number of child workers is currently around 2 million, according to Suyono.
In the problem, "education is the key issue," Suyono said.
Poverty is the main cause of child labor and the government is seriously committed to reduce poverty, Suyono said.
He conceded that in some cases displacement due to development activities was the reason for poverty, as was true for farmers whose land was appropriated for industrial estates.
"But that's not the general situation. Most people become poor because of backwardness... We have 22 million poor people in this country. Are they all poor because they had to give up their land?"
He reminded developed nations that they agreed in a 1970 summit in Rio de Janeiro to provide 0.7 percent of their GNP for Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries. In practice, they now give only 0.3 percent of their GNP, he said.
The Oslo Conference is expected to renew the commitment of developed countries to fulfill the Rio agreement "as soon as possible".
Early this month, Japan, which is the world's largest aid donor, declared it would cut its international aid budget by at least 10 percent next year and keep it down in years to come.
The planned cut in its development assistance budget, which would start in April 1998, would be the first for Japan since its ODA program started in 1954. Japan decided to cut its budget because its budget deficit is reportedly the worst of all major advanced industrialized nations today.
In fiscal 1997, which runs to March 1998, Japan's government set aside 1.17 trillion yen (US$9.7 billion) for its ODA general account budget, financed by taxpayers. Its operational budget, which also is financed through loans, totaled 1.68 trillion yen.
Japan's ODA in 1996 dropped for the first time in dollar terms since 1990 -- falling 35 percent from the previous year to $9.44 billion largely due to the yen's sharp depreciation against the dollar, the report said.
In 1996, Indonesia was the largest recipient of Japan's ODA, receiving $965.5 million, followed by China with $861.7 million, Thailand with $664 million, India with $579.3 million and the Philippines with $414.5 million.
The other top 10 recipients were Pakistan, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.