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span class="inline inline-left">Street entertainers: A boy collects money from passersby as he and his friends entertain people near the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta. JP/Wendra AjistyatamaThe government said on Tuesday that more than 1.7 million child laborers, mostly female, are still being exploited in horrendous working conditions in the country’s big cities.

The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, however, claimed the number has dropped sharply from around four million recorded in 2007. The ministry attributed the decrease to a number of programs it has initiated to encourage child laborers out of the work place and back to school.

Data from the International Labor Organization (ILO), the ministry and the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) show that children are being sexually exploited, taking part in criminal activities like drug-trafficking and other jobs that put their lives in danger.

Harsh job conditions are also found in agriculture, manufacturing, and the service and trade industries.

“Such child slavery can be found on the fishing platforms [Jermal] off the coast of North Sumatra and East Java, while the employment of children in agriculture and on plantations are recorded in North Sumatra, East Java, West and East Nusa Tenggara and Papua,” labor activist Abdul Hakim said at a workshop on Tuesday.

Child laborers employed on Jermal are also prone to sexual abuse. In West and East Java, children, primarily females, have fallen prey to prostitution rings. Places like Indramayu, Bandung and Ciamis in West Java are known to be the places of origin of prostitutes operating in Jakarta, Lampung, Palembang, Dumai and Batam.

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said eradicating these jobs was a challenge, given the rampant poverty that still exists.

“Poverty levels have dropped by 5.26 percent, or by around three million people, in the past five years but according to a national economic survey in September 2011, the number of people living in poverty is 29.89 million, or 12.36 percent of the population. Also, around 35.6 percent of children, or 26.7 million, under the age of five suffers from malnutrition,” Muhaimin said in his keynote speech for the workshop.

Muhaimin said that combating these conditions would take comprehensive measures from the government. “Child labor can be phased out only by empowering their parents so that they can secure jobs to support their own family.”

Activists from the country’s two largest Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, criticized the National Committee for the Phasing-Out of the Worst Forms of Child Labor (BPTA), accusing them of colossally wasting the state budget by achieving so little during the past 10 years.

“The committee and its offices in the provinces and regions should be disbanded because they have wasted the state-budget funding and foreign aid that we received from many countries,” said Ayniah, an activist with Muhammadiyah.

Irwanto, a lecturer from the Jakarta-based Catholic Atmajaya University, who is active on the issue of child labor, criticized the government for the poor coordination among agencies.

“Many ministries, including the Home Ministry, the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry and the Indonesian Commission for Child Protection have been involved in the programs and have identified what the problems are, but so far no significant progress has been made. The progress is not proportional to the huge amount of funds allocated annually,” he said.

The BPTA was formed in 2001 to implement a 2000 law on the phasing out of the worst forms of child labor and a 1999 law on minimum ages for employment, both of which were based on ILO conventions.

Muhaimin, who is also chairman of the BPTA, said the media and NGOs should help the government tackle the problem of child labor.