“I left my family to take care of others. All to make a living. But the government has never paid even a little attention to me, to us domestic workers,” said 36-year-old Ida Sa’adah.

In the last two years, she has worked as a housemaid for five different expatriate families, from Australia, India, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Sweden, who all live in the exclusive Pakubuwono condominiums in South Jakarta.

However, one thing all her employers have shared is a tendency to arbitrarily dismiss their workers, said the woman who has left her two kids and 53-year-old husband in her hometown of Semarang, Central Java.

Late in February, she was in a traffic accident that left her with nine stitches on her left leg.

She asked for three days of bed rest from her Tajik employers, for whom she had worked for three months.

“But, they suddenly fired me, saying that they needed someone who could keep their house clean, without giving me any health assistance,” Ida said.

Not long after, she started working for a Pakistani family, but was fired after two weeks because the employers did not like her taking a break from her duties five times a day to pray.

“If we work for expatriates, we have to follow their rules. No matter what regulations Indonesia has, they will always find a gap as our country has no strong policy to protect workers,” Ida said.

Indonesia is the largest supplier of domestic workers to other countries, but those in the same occupation at home still lack protection. Domestic workers regularly suffer from assault, sometimes on a continual basis, and they still lack legal protection.

The National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy (Jala PRT) recorded 408 cases of mistreatment of domestic workers nationwide last year. As of May this year, the advocacy group had found 170 cases.

Refusal to pay workers’ salaries as well as physical and verbal abuse have been the most common reports this year, with the majority of cases coming from major cities. Other reports include refusal to pay social insurance, arbitrary dismissal, sexual abuse and human trafficking.

However, despite the many cases of mistreatment, the government and lawmakers have yet to consider it an urgent issue.

“The government and lawmakers tend to ignore domestic workers’ rights. They lack political will and a willingness to recognize [the problem], while the demand for domestic workers from middle- and upper-class families remains high,” Jala PRT coordinator Lita Anggraini said.

According to Jala PRT, more than 10.7 million domestic workers in Indonesia at the very least need a law that stipulates their rights and entitlements.

“Indonesia is currently a haven for exploitation of domestic workers, because they have no legal rights. If this situation continues, workers will be dragged down to a state of modern slavery,” she added.

This year, Indonesia ranked ninth in the Global Slavery Index, with around 0.3 percent, around 736,000 individuals, from a population of 252 million, trapped in slavery.

“They know that Indonesia provides no legal protection for domestic workers, so they [employers] take advantage of this. The situation usually worsens during Ramadhan, when employers often arbitrarily fire workers to save money,” Lita said, referring to the practice of giving employees an annual bonus during the Islamic holiday.

The House of Representatives has listed a domestic worker protection bill on the long-list of the 2014-2019 National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

Nasdem Party lawmaker and Irma Suryani Chaniago and member of House Commission IX overseeing manpower and health, said the bill would regulate domestic workers’ rights and entitlements, including salary entitlements. Under the bill, workers and employers will be obliged to sign work contracts, copies of which will also be given to heads of neighborhood units (RT). “[This is] so employers can’t arbitrarily fire their workers, otherwise they’ll face punishment,” Irma said, adding that lawmakers had yet to discuss the forms of punishment that would be handed down to violators.

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