RI, ILO to tackle worst forms of child labor

RI, ILO to tackle worst forms of child labor

Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The International Labor Organization (ILO) will launch on
Thursday a support program to assist the first phase of
Indonesia's national plan of action to tackle the worst forms of
child labor.

Immediate targets of this program will be children involved in
drug trafficking, prostitution, offshore fishing, mining and the
footwear sector, director for operations of ILO's International
Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO-IPEC), Guy Thijs,
said on Wednesday.

"We will link child labor eradication with other development
efforts, including education and poverty alleviation," he said.

The chief technical adviser of the ILO Jakarta office, Patrick
Quinn, said the support program would last for four years, with
some US$4 million of funds involved to finance, among other
activities, public awareness enhancement, advocacy, capacity
building and promotion of labor concerns in national and local
policies.

The ILO has estimated that some four million children below
the age of 18 in the country are involved in employment deemed to
be dangerous. There is no official data on the number of child
laborers here.

Indonesia is the first Asian country to ratify ILO Convention
182, which requires the eradication of 20 of the worst forms of
child labor within 20 years. A national action committee was set
up in 2001 and a 20-year national plan was established under
Presidential Decree No. 59/2002.

Its main focus for the first five years is increasing public
awareness, problem mapping and the establishment of concrete
programs for the eradication of child labor.

"The administrations, central and provincial, hold the central
role. We will only be the catalyst," said Thijs. Provincial
committees are expected to be set up soon.

Pilot projects have been conducted since December 1999 to
demonstrate that work without child labor is possible. The
projects, to end in July, involve children working on fishing
platforms in North Sumatra and children in the footwear industry
in Cibaduyut, Bandung.

"When we started, there were 1,100 children working in
Cibaduyut. Our latest survey in February showed that there were
only 58," said Anna Engblom of the ILO, who is in charge of the
projects.

Awareness raising and collaboration with all stakeholders,
including local administrations, non-governmental organizations,
local communities and the children's parents, contributed much to
the Cibaduyut project's success, she said.

Provincial committees are expected to duplicate such projects,
using the models that already have been tried.

In cooperation with a number of universities in the country,
the ILO-IPEC has also embarked on a rapid assessment to collect
data. They have done surveys to map out children involved in drug
trafficking in Jakarta, prostitution across Java, offshore
fishing in North Sumatra, the footwear sector in West Java and
mining in East Kalimantan.

The assessment of the footwear industry in West Java, for
example, has found two areas with a high percentage of child
labor, in Ciomas and Tasikmalaya. An estimated 9,000 children are
working in these areas.