While the total number of children working in the informal sector in Indonesia is subject to speculation by statistics agencies and NGOs, child labor is part of the everyday reality of the capital. Often in search of a quick income, many children work as domestic helpers, fishermen, scavengers, vendors and laborers. The Jakarta Post explores this ongoing issue.

Marno has lost all of his childhood ambitions to the sea. At 17 years old he no longer dreams of gaining an education or plots future career plans. All he wants to do now is earn money laboring as a traditional fisherman.

“If I were given money, I would spend it on fishing equipment rather than education,” said Marno, adding that his average earnings of Rp 40,000 (US$4.3) a day went largely to helping his family in the fishing village of Muara Angke, North Jakarta.

Wardayah, 15, had a similar story, working as a snack hawker at the Bantar Gebang garbage dump in Bekasi, and earning Rp 500,000 a month. Similarly, Wardayah splits his earnings with his parents — poor farmers in Indramayu, West Java — to help support them and his 7-year-old brother.
“All I want to do is to help [my mother]. Thinking about ambitions is too confusing for me right now,” he said.

Pushed by their families’ burgeoning financial hardships, such children often have no choice but to assume roles as breadwinners at the expense of their education.

According to the 2009 Indonesia Child Labor Survey conducted by the International Labor Organization and the Central Statistics Agency, last year there were 1,679,100 children working long hours in detrimental conditions in the formal and informal sectors in Indonesia. While this figure was 2 percent less than the total in 2008, concerns remain over the apparent lack of concerted efforts to reduce the figures by a considerable amount.

Social Affairs Ministry, the Woman’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, local social affairs agencies, the National Commission for Children Protection (Komnas PA), the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry and numerous NGOs have undertaken separate programs in efforts to improve this situation, while budgets are regularly spent on foreign-based consultants rather than to help the children directly.

For decades, the Bantar Gebang garbage dump site served as a clear example that none of these institutions have had sustainable success in helping minors get back to school.
At one corner of the site, Agus does backbreaking work.

At the tender age of 10, Agus has been working for three years as a full-time trash picker at Bantar Gebang.  

Every day except Sunday, Agus starts his day at 6 a.m., picking through garbage with his parents.
With a pick in his hand instead of a pencil, and a woven basket in place of a school bag, Agus rummages through garbage at the foot of a 20-meter-high mountain of waste, in search of resellable plastic bags and cups, leaving the steeper climbs up the mountain to his parents.

In nine hours, Agus and his parents collect up to 100 kilograms of plastics, which Agus transports using a wooden cart (almost as tall as him) to their shanty around 2 kilometers away.
Agus and his parents collectively earn a meager Rp 10,000 a day from selling the trash — just enough to buy five cups of rice shared between Agus’ six family members.

“Sometimes I only eat noodles and tofu for lunch for just Rp 1,000. I don’t buy knickknacks because I don’t have enough money,” said Agus, whose scars from cuts from broken glass reflect the physical hazards of his work.

Dead tired and asleep by 8 p.m, Agus has no time to study, let alone to play.
Around 45 kilometers northwest of the site, Kampung Nelayan fishing village is home to perhaps the largest population of working children in Jakarta.

The wives of fishermen and their children spend most afternoons and evenings helping to process the catch of the day.  

They bring their toddlers and young children to the picking site, littered with broken shards of shells and swarming with flies.

Toddlers as young as two years old are trained to work — their tiny fingers nimbly cracking open shells and pulling out the meat in seconds. The women are paid Rp 7,000 for a half-oil-drum-full of shellfish. The children are not paid but can stop whenever they get tired.
Aside from parental poverty, consumerism also compounds this problem, further locking children into labor.

These children often prefer to use their earnings to buy the latest Nokia mobile phone rather than saving up for school.

Wardayah spent his meager savings on a mobile phone that he uses to keep in touch with his family in the village.

Marno and Agus also dream of having phones, but can’t afford them yet.
According to Wardah Hafidz of the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC), the children’s consumptive spending stems from exposure to television.

Agus’ bedtime habit is watching the local soap opera Cinta Fitri, which tells the story of a poor girl’s romance with a rich man.
Regardless of what drives children into labor, little has been done to turn their fate around.
Most of the children and parents interviewed by the Post said they receivedbarely any assistance from the government, NGOs or community groups.

Komnas PA claims limited authority and funding constrain its ability to get children out of such conditions.

“It is not easy to help around 5 million child laborers. The government must be involved, as ending child labor means eradicating poverty as its roots,” Komnas PA chairman Seto Mulyadi said.
“We also have to consider the complicated factors that motivate parents to force their children to work.”

Whatever the gains, the effects of child labor are extremely detrimental to children’s growth.
“Child labor destroys a child’s personality because of the high stress, erasing children’s ambitions and dreams, and making them apathetic and frustrated,” Seto said.
It may also seem difficult to expect children to juggle between helping out their parents and getting an education.

Schools are rarely free, with some charging fees for enrollment, books and uniforms.
A shellfish picker at Kampung Nelayan pays Rp 20,000 for his child’s kindergarten fees, while a trash picker at Bantar Gebang paid Rp 60,000 for enrollment and then Rp 7,000 every month.
Seto said that without education children would quietly realize they were trapped in low-skilled jobs, hampering any dreams of a profession they would like to have.
“I want to be an excavator operator,” Agus said when asked of his future, perhaps not realizing that excavator operators are paid a minimum wage, guaranteeing that the cycle of poverty would continue. (gzl/ipa)

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