CHILD LABOR’S LAW ALLOWS YOU TO ABUSE CHILD

Human rights watch reports that there are many child labors in Indonesia are exploited and abused, especially child labors that work as housemaids. These exploitations also happen with children housemaid who works in their own relative’s house. They are isolated in their employer’s house without any supervision from the authority. The same kind of case may happen to other children housemaids. Based on International Labor Organization (ILO) report, today there are approximately 2.6 million housemaids in Indonesia and at least 688.132 of them are children housemaids. All of these children housemaids are not protected by the authority from any exploitation. This awful truth becomes a major prove that there is something wrong with our child labor regulations. In 1999, ILO Convention no. 182 and recommendation No. 190 has obligated the ratifying states to immediately stipulate laws and sanction for any person who has involved in taking children to the worst forms of child labor. As ratifying state, Indonesia has provided the law and regulation regarding child labor. It is reflected in Law No.13 of 2003 on Manpower (“Manpower Law”), Law No.39 of 1999 on Human Rights (“Human Rights Law”) and Law No.23 of 2002 on Child Protection (“Child Protection Law”). Regarding the facts mentioned before, these laws might be needs to be reviewed to eliminate its weak points and reducing the number of exploitation on child labor in Indonesia (this should go to the 1st paragraph).

One of those weak points is that there are several cases that are not covered by our law in Indonesia. The housemaid case for example, housemaid is not classified as a job in the regulation, so it is not included in national labor’s regulation which regulate labor rights such as minimum wage, overtime wage, working hour, holiday, or social security as for regular formal labor. And this case is happening to every single housemaid, child and adult. Without any guarantee for their social security and labor’s rights they can only trust their rights to the hands of the employer. The chance of exploitation on labors, including child labors, will always open.

The other weak point is on the implementation. Currently, there is no effective mechanism of control from the authority to supervise the violation of child labor’s rights by the employer company. It is said not effective because in the reality some companies who violate the rules of child labor are not given sanction. Kak Seto, the chief of Child Protection Commission state that this case happens because these companies are hard to “penetrate”, so the local authority can not supervise their labors very well. If this chance of violation still happening on formal child labor because of it weak supervision, then the bigger chance of violation will always happen to the informal labor such as children housemaid.

Indonesia also does not have any governmental organization specified on child. Basically, children who can not afford school and potential on becoming child labor are handled by education department. Homeless children with the same potential are handled by social department. While child labor itself are handled by labor department. Each department has their own programs on children, but unfortunately their programs are not integrated. This is another weak point for our law.

Indonesia has provided laws and regulations to handle child labor’s issues. Number of efforts has been made. But still, in the reality there are informal labors that are not covered in the regulation. The implementation of sanction itself is not strictly imposed. Violations still happens on both formal and informal labors. As a conclusion, our law still needs to be reviewed to provide better treatment for children, especially child labors.

Your writing is good, you need to sharpen your 1st paragraph (including your views) and then elaborate your view in the body paragraphs.