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Manpower ministry vows to reduce child labor
The Manpower Ministry hopes to liberate 82,000 child workers working in companies throughout Indonesia over the next five years by collaborating with the Culture and Education Ministry and the Religious Affairs Ministry.
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Handmade: Workers manufacture hand-rolled cigarettes (SKT) in Kudus, Central Java. (Antara/Yusuf Nugroho)
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he Manpower Ministry hopes to liberate 82,000 child workers working in companies throughout Indonesia over the next five years by collaborating with the Culture and Education Ministry and the Religious Affairs Ministry.
The ministry said it would help underage workers found working in companies by sending them to shelters to be trained for a different future.
“We are working together with the Culture and Education Ministry to help children so they can go back to school as soon as possible. We are also collaborating with the Religious Affairs Ministry to guide children into Islamic boarding schools,” said Herman Prakoso Hidayat, the secretary of the directorate general of labor inspection at the Manpower Ministry, on Tuesday.
The ministry said it had deployed 1,760 supervisors throughout the country to map out companies that employed underage workers in labor-intensive industries such as textiles and tobacco.
“Supervising 20 million companies [throughout the country] is hard because we only have a limited number of supervisors, but we are continuously maximizing our capacity,” he said.
Herman said the ministry had successfully taken care of 16,500 child workers so far this year.
The total number of underage workers in Indonesia is estimated at 1.7 million, he added. (win/dmr)
