Researchers predict crisis of employment
Researchers predict crisis of employment
JAKARTA (JP): Adequately paying jobs in Greater Jakarta will
decrease due to less demand for manufacturing workers, a
smaller possibility of higher wages compared to living expenses
and the wrong approach to the informal sector, researchers say.
The garment industry, the target of many migrant workers, will
decline, said Indrasari Tjandraningsih of the Bandung-based
Akatiga social research center.
On the other hand, more sophisticated industries like the
electronics sector are unlikely to pay higher wages than they are
paying now, she said.
Another researcher from the Center of Policy Implementation
Studies, Isono Sadoko, also said underemployment will become
"more serious".
"I am referring to more people working for low earnings,
rather than unemployment," said Isono, who was involved in a
study on the city's informal sector from the 1980s to the early
1990s.
More people will also have to work at several jobs at once to
be able to feed their families, he said.
The researchers were commenting on recent warnings of urban
employment crisis from the International Labor Organization.
According to the organization's report titled "The Future of
Urban Employment" the year 2000 will see larger numbers of urban
poor, reaching approximately one billion worldwide.
Tjandraningsih said many business owners in the textile and
garment sector are looking to other countries like China and
Vietnam for more competitive production costs, such as cheaper
labor.
Recent strikes by industrial workers here voiced demands that
employers pay at least the minimum daily amount of Rp 5,200
(US$2.21).
"The manufacturing sector will unlikely absorb more than a
third of the labor force," Tjandraningsih said.
The researchers said separately this would mean the informal
sector, which may even bring higher earnings, would still draw
most job-seekers in Greater Jakarta.
Figures from the city's population agency from 1990 to 1994
show an average of more than 81,000 new migrants per year.
However, Isono said employment statistics may miss the
activities of many former kampong residents who have moved to the
city's outskirts.
Mubyarto, second assistant to the chairman of the National
Development Planning Board, said he could not say whether the on-
going program for poor villages would eventually curb the flow of
job-seekers to cities.
Called the Aid Program for the Least Developed Villages,
including 11 subdistricts in Jakarta, the program has at least
shown that loans have been used well and have created additional
employment within villages, he said.
Mubyarto said the program, launched in 1993, strives to make
the poor independent through loans, which averaged Rp 220,500 per
family in the 1994/1995 fiscal year.
The program also aims to away with the term "informal sector",
which some perceive to mean that those involved must become
formal. This idea entails the largely impossible need for more
resources like capital, Mubyarto said.
"The correct term is 'people's economy'," he said, which
implies continuous support of earning activities to eradicate
poverty.
Isono also said urban planners tend to see the informal sector
as something temporary before those involved shift to formal
economy.
He said this is indicated by meager sums of assistance, the
provision of only temporary stalls, and difficulty in acquiring
credit. This explains the constraints to improvement of the urban
poor, he said.
Measures such as a city rule stating that shopping centers
must provide space for small traders, "are yet to prove to be
consistent", Isono said. (anr)