Nothing wrong with child labor, says official

By T. Sima Gunawan

OSLO (JP): An Indonesian delegate to the International Conference on Child Labor said there was nothing wrong with child labor as long it did not interfere with a child's education, social and moral development.

"If a child enjoys the work and it does not affect its education, moral and social development, there should not be any problem," said Amrinal Baharuddin of the Ministry of Manpower during a break in the conference, the target of which is to eradicate child labor, among other things.

"It is impossible to eliminate child labor," Baharuddin told The Jakarta Post. "Child workers are found not only in developing countries, but also in developed countries."

Another Indonesian delegate, Suyono Yahya, said earlier that child labor was a reality that was impossible to abolish.

The Oslo Conference brings together 40 nations to discuss ways to eliminate child labor as defined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. An Agenda for Action will be adopted tomorrow at the end of the four-day event.

Baharuddin said Indonesia had sufficient laws to protect child workers.

Basically, employers are not allowed to hire children under 15 years old. But children may be employed under the condition that they are not made to work for more than four hours a day. Employers are also obliged to give them access to education, socialization and "mental and spiritual" guidance, according to Baharuddin.

He conceded that exploitation of working children often occurred when employers failed to comply with existing regulations. He appealed to the public, however, not to lay all the blame on the Ministry of Manpower.

"People always blame the ministry whenever there's a labor problem. They don't realize that the problem of child workers also involves other ministries, such as the Ministry of Social Services and the Ministry of Education and Culture," he said.

He claimed his office was doing its best to deal with the matter.

"We issue warnings to employers, tell them that children are assets that should be cultivated and educated," he said.

Baharuddin said one of the problems hampering the ministry's effort to prevent the exploitation of child workers was the shortage of labor inspectors. There are only 800 inspectors for Indonesia's 16 million workers.

Employers are obligated to report the hiring of children to the local manpower office. Based on reports, Baharuddin said, there were about 200,000 children working in the formal sector.

The Central Bureau of Statistics puts the number of working children at 2.1 million, or more than 9 percent of the country's children.

The International Labor Office estimates there are 250 million working children worldwide.

One of the priorities of the Oslo Conference is on the immediate removal of children from the most intolerable forms of child labor as well as their rehabilitation and the provision of adequate alternatives for children and their families.

Baharuddin said Indonesia had a long list of intolerable forms of child labor, such as child prostitution and children working under hazardous conditions and in risky occupations.

He voiced full support for the eradication of child labor in those categories, but complained about the difficulties in waging a campaign against such employment.

"How can you detect child prostitution?" he said.

On children working on jermal (fishing stations) off the North Sumatra coast, where social workers say children work in harsh conditions, he said: "I have been there, but I did not find many (children)."

He quickly added: "But we will write a letter to ban this. A ministerial decree will be issued, if necessary."

Earlier reports said there were more than 50,000 children and teenagers working under poor conditions on nearly 250 fishing stations off the coast.

In 1992, Indonesia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ILO on the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor. The program involves the ministries of manpower, education and culture, social services, and other concerned government institutions and non-governmental organizations.