Govt to provide schooling for child workers

Govt to provide schooling for child workers

JAKARTA (JP): The government will launch next month a program
to provide schooling for children who have to work to supplement
their parents' income, the Ministry of Education and Culture
announced yesterday.

The government will run special elementary and junior high
school classes for child workers, the director general for
extracurricular education, youth and sports, Soedijarto, said.

Initially, three such schools will be opened, one each in
South Sulawesi, West Java and East Java, he said during an
announcement on the government's activities for International
Literacy Day next Monday.

The program, a joint endeavor with the International Labor
Organization (ILO), is part of a government drive to eradicate
illiteracy in the country by the year 2000, he said.

The illiteracy rate in Indonesia is officially put at 12.6
percent of the population aged 10 years and above.

Child labor is defined as children working like adults, paying
for their own economic or family's needs, not just children
earning pocket money.

The government has denied foreign accusations that Indonesia
had a major child labor problem, saying that children were
working to help their parents and the phenomena was not the same
as how Western countries define child labor.

However, an ILO report says that 9.55 percent of Indonesian
children between 10 and 14 years old work. This means Indonesia
has as many as five million child workers, including 400,000 in
Jakarta, many of whom are subjected to dangerous chemical and
biological hazards.

Indonesia has made schooling free for all children between six
and 15 years old under the nine-year compulsory education
program.

However, Soedijarto said the government could not force
children to go to school if parents wanted them to work to
supplement the family's income. (09)