INDONESIA EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Indonesia is a multiparty ...

INDONESIA 39
The government did not enforce minimum age laws effectively, and furthermore
did not act effectively to eliminate forced child labor. Despite legislative and
regulatory measures, most children who worked, including as domestic workers,
did so in unregulated environments. Anecdotal evidence suggested that local labor
officials did not investigate the workplaces of child domestic workers and carried
out few child labor investigations in factories.
An estimated six to eight million children exceeded the legal three-hour-daily work
limit, working in agriculture, street vending, mining, clothing manufacture, and
other areas. A 2009 survey from by the International Labor Organization and the
National Statistics Agency reported that about four million working children age
10 to 17 are considered employed in wage work by the standard definition.
Children worked in agriculture primarily on palm oil, tobacco, rubber, and tea
plantations. Children also worked in fisheries, manufacturing (such as cottage
factory footwear production, textiles, and cigarette production), logging, toy
making, food processing (e.g., bird-nest gathering), and in the small-scale mining
sector. Other children work in the informal sector selling newspapers, shining
shoes, street vending, scavenging, and working with their parents in family
businesses or cottage industries.
A significant number of children worked against their will in prostitution;
pornography; begging; drug sale, production, and trafficking; domestic service;
and other exploitive situations, including a small number on fishing platforms.
A domestic worker advocacy group estimated that there were four million
domestic workers in the country, of whom at least 1.3 million were under age 18.
Many domestic workers were not allowed to study and were forced to work long
hours, received low pay, and generally were unaware of their rights. Child
domestic work is considered one of the worst forms of child labor, as it often
renders children vulnerable to sexual, physical, or psychological abuse.
Also see the Department of Labor’s Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor
at www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/tda.htm.
d. Acceptable Conditions of Work
The minimum wage levels set by most local governments did not provide a worker
and family with a decent standard of living. Most province-level minimum wage
rates fell below the government’s own calculation of basic minimum needs.
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011
United States Department of State • Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor