Urgent Call for PPRT Bill to Be Enacted, Government Urged to Remove Protection Inequality

Jakarta — Member of the Legislative Body (Baleg) of the Indonesian House of Representatives, Habib Syarief, has urged the government not to tolerate protection gaps between domestic workers and workers in other sectors. He said it was essential to promptly enact the Draft Law on Protection for Domestic Workers (RUU PPRT). ‘The state must not allow protection inequality simply because the work takes place in a domestic space. Domestic workers are fully fledged workers who deserve the same protection standards as those in other sectors,’ Syarief told a public hearing on the RUU PPRT organised by Baleg of the DPR RI on Thursday (5 March 2026). He also referred to a 2019 legal case in which the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down Spain’s policy of denying unemployment insurance to domestic workers on the grounds of private work. The court ruled that the exemption amounted to gender discrimination because 95 per cent of workers in that sector were women. ‘That global experience is a crucial lesson. If our regulation still leaves room to exclude PRT from the right to a fair wage and social security, then the state is effectively allowing gender discrimination,’ Syarief said. He asserted that the RUU PPRT must guarantee full access to BPJS Kesehatan, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan, and the health and safety at work standards (K3). The enactment of the RUU PPRT is not merely a technical labour matter but a fulfilment of the state’s moral and constitutional obligations. ‘Protecting domestic workers is not a matter of charity, but the state’s duty to realise social justice. We must eliminate this structural vulnerability now,’ he said. The reason is that domestic workers operate in private and domestic spaces, where government control and oversight are limited, making them highly vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, and violence in practice. Since 2004, the RUU PPRT has always appeared in the national legislative programme (prolegnas) each DPR term, but it has still not been enacted in the DPR term 2019–2024.