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