Tales of hard child labor on N. Sumatra's fishing stations

Text and photos by Ridwan M. Sijabat

TANJUNG BALAI, North Sumatra (JP): A beach resort is a place where most people, especially children, would be happy to stay for days, weeks or even months. But for school-age children and youths employed in fishing stations along North Sumatra's coastal areas, living by the sea is painful.

More than 50,000 children and teenagers work under poor labor conditions on nearly 250 jermal, or fishing stations, off the eastern coast of North Sumatra.

They work in excess of 19 hours a day without adequate meals and rest. The workers in charge of netting fish are forced to get out of bed at 2 a.m. and do not return home until 9 p.m. Those who cook and process the caught fish begin working at 4 a.m. At the crack of dawn, children can be seen boiling and salting the fish before setting them out to dry in the sun.

The children are paid between Rp 50,000 and Rp 80,000 per month while older workers receive between Rp 100,000 and Rp 150,000. Standard safety equipment and medical facilities are nowhere to be found on the station.

Ernaldo, 18, recently told The Jakarta Post about his painful three years of employment at a jermal stationed 10 nautical miles off Tanjung Balai. He told of how he and 15 fellow workers -- eight teenagers and seven children -- worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week.

"We wake up at 2 a.m. everyday and start working by putting the nets into the sea. Two hours later, we lift up the nets, collect the fish and clean them," he said.

They repeat the work once again before having breakfast at six. They usually have boiled rice and fried fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Ernaldo's job gets even harder during the day when he not only has to net, boil, salt and dry the fish, but pack each and every one into boxes and bamboo baskets. Every day the workers catch an average of 80 kilograms of teri (anchovies), tuna, shrimp and crabs. The packed fish are then transported by the owner to the mainland for sale.

"Before we stop working at around seven in the evening, we have to net fish one more time. The fish we catch late in the afternoon are stored until the next day, when they'll be boiled," he said.

Ernaldo, a high school dropout from Pematang Siantar, said he was paid Rp 50,000 a month in his first year of employment in 1993.

"I received Rp 80,000 a month in the second year and Rp 100,000 in the third year in 1995 and 1996. No other additional income, that's all," he said.

The monthly minimum wage in North Sumatra in 1995 was Rp 109,200 and Rp 138,000 in 1996.

He said that he spent all of his monthly wage on clothes and cigarettes, which the workers buy from fishermen passing by their station.

"I have to buy at least three to five pieces of clothing every two months because the salty seawater quickly frays our clothes," he said.

Ernaldo said that he and his colleagues work without labor standards, rights protection or social security. Disputes among the workers are mediated by the supervisors, while disputes between workers and the jermal supervisors and owners are resolved by Navy officers patrolling the waters.

Ernaldo complained that the naval officers always sided with the owners and supervisors.

Abdul, a 13-year-old worker, said that the owners provided no medication except for over-the-counter headache and fever pills like Bodrex and Panadol and Betadine for injuries.

"Workers suffering from anything more serious are sent back to their home villages," he said.

Kept silent

He recalled a terrifying incident in 1995 when his supervisor dumped into the sea the body of a fellow worker who had died of high fever. He said the worker, identified as Pontas Pasaribu from Perdagangan, Simalungun Regency, refused to be sent home when he was dying.

Asked why he and the workers failed to report the incident to the local police, Abdul replied that apart from not being able to return to the mainland, all the workers on the station were told they would be killed if they went to the police. He said on most jermal, the supervisors, most of Chinese descent, had two or more strongmen to watch over the workers, the station and all the fishing facilities.

Ernaldo and Abdul, who were wearing shabby clothes, revealed that in another incident, the supervisor's assistant was killed following a dispute with the workers.

The two teenagers, who admitted to being involved in the killing, said the workers had decided to kill him in remembrance of their fellow worker whose body was dumped into the sea three months earlier.

"Together, we managed to press the supervisor to 'make peace' (not report the case) after we threatened to burn down the jermal, which is worth more than Rp 1 billion," said Ernaldo.

Home

Abdul, an elementary school graduate, has been employed for 16 months on the station and doesn't want to go home because he has no other means of making money.

"My father died three years ago of tuberculosis and my mother several months later. They didn't leave me, my four brothers or my two sisters any farm land, just an old hut," he said, adding that his older brothers were employed on a state-owned palm oil plantation in Kisaran, North Sumatra.

Ernaldo and Abdul said poor labor conditions were typical on almost all of the 80 jermal in the Tanjungbalai waters.

Donny bin Safrudin, a 12-year-old working on a station 10 nautical miles off Sialangbuah, near Tebing Tinggi, told the Post that eight of the 15 workers on his station were under 15.

"There are a lot of child workers employed on jermal here but we have no serious trouble handling our daily jobs," he said, adding that he was in charge of cooking and boiling fish.

Donny, an elementary school dropout from Sialangbuah, and seven other children working on the station are paid between Rp 50,000 and Rp 80,000 depending on the job.

Nasruddin, 14, said the station owners recruited most of their child labor from local brokers.

"We are paid less (than the standard wages) because we are bought from the illegal brokers at a high price. It is difficult to get off the jermal because we cannot swim and don't have any boats to escape on," he said.

Many workers employed in Pantai Cermin and Belawan, two port cities near the provincial capital, said they were forced to work on the stations because of the harvest failures in their home villages. Others, they said, decide to work on jermal to escape the police.

"I accepted my fellow worker's call to work here because of the poor farming conditions in my village in Tanah Jawa, Simalungun Regency," said 20-year-old Soenaryo, who first arrived in August 1995.

He said that many youths from his village were forced to migrate to other areas for work due to an outbreak of plant diseases and pest infestation. Many have become becak (three- wheel pedicab) drivers.

Soenaryo said it was better for him to work on a jermal than drive a becak in Medan or elsewhere.

"I can save around Rp 40,000 of my monthly wage and bring over Rp 150,000 each time I go home to see my family," he said.

He said he was allowed to take a week-long vacation once every four months.

The supervisors

Cho Lai, who supervises the station where Ernaldo and Abdul are employed, said most owners live in Medan and rarely visit their jermal.

He denied that employers exploited their workers or went looking for child laborers.

"We did not ask them to come here. They came and asked for jobs and we gave them what they were looking for," he said.

Cho, an elementary school graduate earning Rp 1 million month, said the wage system was based on negotiations, though he refused to explain how wages were set and why children were paid less than other workers.

"I am employed here to supervise the jermal and its workers and to send the fish to the owner," he said.

He said that labor conditions on his station were the same as elsewhere.

Cho admitted that every month jermal owners pay a large sum of money, dubbed "security funds", to Navy patrol ships. He said he did not know how much, but said the process to extend the station's operation permit would be more complicated if the monthly money was not paid.

"What's important is that we do our business smoothly," he said.