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Your letters: Law review urgent for PRT protection
Toilet humor: Domestic workers stage a demonstration before the House of Representative compoundâs gate, demanding the House endorse a long-awaited bill on housemaid protection
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Toilet humor: Domestic workers stage a demonstration before the House of Representative compoundâs gate, demanding the House endorse a long-awaited bill on housemaid protection.(JP/Wendra Ajistyatama) (JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)
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span class="inline inline-center">Toilet humor: Domestic workers stage a demonstration before the House of Representative compound's gate, demanding the House endorse a long-awaited bill on housemaid protection.(JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)
The National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy (JALA PRT) recently released data stating that there had been 376 domestic violence cases throughout 2015. In regards to the news, I'd like to say that this kind of violence will continue to happen if the government doesn't want to support the enactment of a law for protecting domestic workers.
Actually, the government has published Manpower Ministrial Regulation No. 02/2015 on domestic workers' protection. The regulation should be appreciated as it shows that the government has declared it recognizes domestic workers as workers, not merely as maids.
However, at the same time this regulation also denies the role of the government itself in the context of industrial relations, as we know that in industrial relations there are three parties ' employers, unions and the government ' where the government is supposed to protect workers as they are always in a weaker position than employers.
However, in the new ministerial regulation, the government is apparently pushing the relationship between employers and domestic workers to become a private matter as it ruled in the regulation that all agreements regarding rights and responsibilities of both parties (employers and domestic workers) must be ruled between them without referring to any labor standards enjoyed by other workers such as minimum wages.
Therefore, using a metaphor, I would say that the regulation is like your friend inviting you to a dinner because he or she wants to treat you, yet at the end he or she asks you to pay for yourself.
It's exactly like that, in my point of view, since in the regulation, the government mentions some basic rights for domestic workers such as an adequate salary, annual leave, social protection and even the 13th salary (THR), yet in the end the government doesn't provide protection for that.
So it's just sort of a guideline where the employer is not obliged to follow it.
Thus, I suggest the government provide stronger protection for domestic workers.
Rasyidi Bakry
South Sulawes
