Regulations on household help
Regulations on household help
The media frequently reports on household help who have had
saddening experiences in their employment both abroad and at
home. Such experiences have included maltreatment, rape and
murder by their employers, unpaid salaries, low wages, long
working hours, no insurance, accidents in the work place, abuse
of work agreements by employers, the absence of proper
accommodation and the lack of nutritional food.
The long list of poor conditions experienced by household help
is due to the absence of regulations protecting them. The Jakarta
regional administration has Regional Regulation No.6/1993 on the
welfare of household help in Jakarta, but the regulation is
focused more on the regional revenues obtained from household
help agencies and less on adequate legal protection for household
help.
Law No.25/1997, Articles 158 and 159 on the informal sector,
as well as the bill for its perfection now being discussed at the
manpower ministry does not regulate clearly the forms of
protection for household help. As in most laws, the two articles
above only rely on their implementation in the lower-level
regulations which at present is yet to be made. According to the
latest information from the ministry's legal office the
regulations especially for the informal sector in the above bill
are planned to be abolished because there is no need for
differentiation of the formal and informal terms.
Honestly speaking, the Legal Aid Institute-Indonesian Women's
Association for Justice (LBH-APIK) has its objections if the term
informal sector is really abolished, at least in consideration of
the specific situation of the workers of the informal sector. The
various situations experienced by household help described above
indicate the minimum of protection for them so that the
regulations of the informal sector must be maintained to ensure
protection.
Moreover, consideration must be given to the recommendation by
a Team for Legal Studies held by the Ministry of Justice in
cooperation with Agency for National Legal Development, in which
the LBH-APIK is involved, i.e. the recommendation that follow-up
steps be taken of Articles 158 and 159 of the Manpower Law by
making regulations on the welfare and legal protection for
household help, such as wages, work limitations, safety,
occupational health, life insurance, protection against violence
and the mechanism for settling conflicts or legal remedies
between household help and their employers.
In the context of following up on the recommendations the LBH-
APIK is conducting studies to make a legal drafting of a
government regulation bill on the protection of household help in
cooperation with the Yogyakarta network of handling household
help matters such as Tjut Nya' Dien, PKBI Yogya, SBPY and
Yabinkas.
RATNA BATARA MUNTI
LBH-APIK
Jakarta