Real protection urged for maids
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Activists questioned on Wednesday the seriousness of the City Council and the administration to provide legal protection for housemaids.
Lawyer Ratna Batara Murti of the Legal Aid Association of Indonesian Women for Justice (LBH APIK) and researcher Dhevy Setya Wibawa of Atma Jaya University criticized the administration's failure to implement Bylaw No. 6/1993 on the supervision of domestic helpers in the city.
While hailing their plan to revise the bylaw, they underlined that the new regulations should be made to protect the housemaids.
"The bylaw should include protection of the rights of domestic helpers and should not just be used as a tool for the administration to exploit taxes from the recruitment agencies," Ratna said.
She said that most Jakartans were not aware of the presence of the 1993 bylaw because the administration had not publicized it.
The bylaw carries sanctions for the bylaw violators of three months in detention or Rp 50,000 in fines.
It has 31 articles. Six articles are about the obligations of the recruitment agency, two articles mention obligations of the employers, two articles on the obligation of domestic helpers and eight articles regulate the agency's obligation to pay fees to the administration.
"It does not discuss any details of the working contract, the working hours, holiday, leave, facilities or compensation," Dhevy added.
Therefore, they said it was important to revise the bylaw.
"It's too early to talk about its effectiveness now, but I believe that a revision is needed to assure the rights of the maids as well as the relationship between them and their employers," Dhevy said.
Ratna said the council should seek information from non- governmental organizations or other parties concern with the issue before revising the bylaw.
"If they are serious about protecting maids, they must work together with these parties as well as residents here to assure its implementation. Otherwise, the bylaw would mean nothing," she said.
On Tuesday, the head of the city manpower agency Ali Zubair said that the revision of the bylaw would give detailed rulings on the agreement between the domestic helper and the employers.
The revision would include the obligations of each domestic helper agency to pay tax to the administration. Currently, the bylaw regulates each agency to pay Rp 500,000 for an operational license, which lasts for three years. But, Ali said that it had not been implemented.
Maids actually play an important part in Indonesian's households. Most middle-class families rely on their maids to take care of their household chores, cook their food and raise their children.