Working children want protection and more say

By T. Sima Gunawan

OSLO, Norway (JP): "To work or not to work," was the big question in the recent International Conference on Child Labor, which had the stated long-term aim to eliminate child labor.

An Agenda for Action was adopted and officials voiced pledges to improve the fate of some 250 million working children worldwide. About 120 million of them work full-time -- with more than 60 percent of them in Asia.

With 22 million of Indonesia's 200 million people living below the poverty line, millions of children work to support their families. Official data shows 2.1 million child workers.

Children working is a widely accepted social phenomenon in Indonesia, and many youngsters claim they do not mind because their wages support their families.

"I can send my younger sister to school," Ida Narsidah, 14, said proudly.

She is one of the registered 200,000 children who work in the formal sector, most of them in greater Jakarta.

She works a 10-hour day at a cookie factory in Tangerang, West Java, earning Rp 30,000 a week.

Accompanied by Rostymaline Munthe from the Working Children's Foundation (Kompak), Narsidah was in Oslo to attend the Children's Forum.

Organized by Save the Children Alliance, the forum was meant to ensure the children's voice was heard in the International Conference on Child Labor.

What the children said placed less stress on the elimination of child labor than protection for them, and for all those who have to work.

Children, they said, should play a greater role in efforts to deal with the child labor issue, but their views on how this should be done differed.

Munthe said Latin American representatives insisted that children must have the right to work. They believed it was up to the children themselves to decide whether they wanted to work or study.

Children from South Asia emphasized the need for working children's to have the right to organize their own trade unions to advocate their rights.

No choice

Working children from West Africa called for the improvement of the education system, as they considered the current one out of touch with the realities of their lives.

"As for us from Southeast Asia, we believe that children have to work because they don't have any other choice," Munthe told The Jakarta Post. Trade unions was apparently not part of the discourse here.

There must be distinctions made between tolerable and intolerable forms of child labor, she said.

"The intolerable forms of child labor must be eliminated, while conditions of the others must be improved," she said.

The most intolerable forms of child labor include children who work in hazardous occupations, prostitution, pornography, slavery and debt bondage.

The conference, held from Oct. 27 to Oct. 30, brought together 40 nations to discuss ways to fight child labor. Part of its basis was the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for the protection of children from economic exploitation.

Indonesia, which ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, pledged to implement national policies for the progressive "virtual" elimination of child labor. It focuses on preventive actions to discourage children entering the market by providing them with access to basic education.

"Virtual" was specifically used because the government believes it is infeasible to completely eliminate child labor.

On this point, there seemed to be agreement with the children, although the latter might not have understood the following argument.

An Indonesian delegate to the conference, Amrinal Baharuddin, director of employment terms supervision under the Ministry of Manpower, said there was nothing wrong with child labor "as long as the work does not interfere with the child's education, social and moral development".

Indonesia, he said, had regulations stipulating that employers should facilitate the working children's education, "as well as providing them with social and moral guidance."

What is written is not how it often turns out in practice.

HM Rienaldo Thamrin, vice president of the Employers' Association of Indonesia, admitted the lack of employers' attention to their workers' welfare, particularly in the sectors of textiles, garments, shoes, toys and electronic appliances.

On average, the labor component is only between 7 and 8 percent of the production cost. One of the problems is due to the high invisible costs, Thamrin said, running to about 30 percent of production costs.

"We will cut the invisible cost only if there is a strong political will from the government... The time will come, but I don't know how long the workers can wait," he said.

Education

Participants agreed the main weapon to fight child labor was education. However, it is hard to imagine Narsidah and her colleagues having time to study after a long hard day's work. Even if they wanted to, facilities are absent.

Narsidah, who works from 7 a.m to 5 p.m., left school at 11, when she was in fifth grade of elementary school. She said she would like to study in the future, but she was doubtful about the chances of it happening.

"I want to study after work, but is there any night school for us?" she asked.

Suyono Yahya, secretary to the Coordinating Ministry for People's Welfare, assured the government was working on the matter.

"We are preparing a system to enable children to work and study. The structure should be made by the Ministry of Education and Culture, while implementation would involve the Ministry of Social Affairs or the Ministry of Manpower, depending on the nature of the work."

In the meantime, the government is encouraging the public to take part in the national foster parents movement to help poor children in getting access to education.

"Our target is to help 5 million child workers and other needy children by 2008," he said.

Sadly, for Nursidah and the millions of other child workers here, that aid will come too late.