The government hopes to remove as many as 22,000 children from hard labor and provide assistance to 2,000 poor families by 2011, under the second phase of a program launched here Wednesday.

The second phase, a five-year project to support the National Action Plan for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor, started last year.

The first phase of the project, conducted in Jakarta, West Java, East Java, North Sumatra and East Kalimantan between 2002 and 2007, focused on assisting children involved in the drugs trade and in informal industries such as domestic industries and offshore mining.

During the first phase of the project, 2,154 children were taken out of the worst forms of labor and 27,078 others were prevented from becoming laborers, Manpower and Transmigration Minister Erman Suparno said.

"But we have yet to see significant results from this project," he said at the ceremony to launch the program.

"Overcoming the problems of child labor should start with making improvements in the demographic, education and health systems."

He said such improvements included finding ways to control population growth and to enhance the quality of family life, especially in relation to education and health.

At the same event, State Minister for Women's Empowerment Meutia Farida Hatta said millions of Indonesian children were forced to drop out of school to enter the workforce before they had even completed their basic education.

These children are trapped in this situation because they have to help provide for their poor families, she added.

"Government data reveal that currently about 11.7 million children have dropped out of elementary or secondary school," Meutia said.

"They hover around the city streets and work as buskers or beggars, while others become domestic workers or laborers in plantations and factories."

It is estimated more than 1.5 million children aged between 10 and 17 years are employed in the agricultural sector. The three provinces with the most child laborers in the sector are North Sumatra with 155,196 children, Central Java with 204,406 children and East Java with 224,075 children, she added.

According to International Labor Organization (ILO) data, about 166 million children aged between 5 and 14 years worldwide are currently involved in labor, 74.4 million of whom are doing hazardous work, such as in the chemical industry.

In Indonesia, about 700,000 children younger than 18 were working as domestic laborers in 2003, according to the ILO.

Most of them were girls from rural areas who were lured with promises of decent work with high wages but were not given details of where they would be taken or their working conditions, it added.

"These children are prone to commercial and even sexual exploitation," Meutia said.

ILO data show 21,552 children younger than 18 were involved in prostitution throughout Java in 2003.

In a bid to deal with the issue, the government has ratified an ILO convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor and established a national action plan that features a three-phase program over 20 years.

The program aims to reduce the number of child laborers by providing access to formal and informal education, counseling and internships.

It also provides assistance to the children's families through economic empowerment programs.

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