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)