Child Labor and Their Education

Many children work in Indonesia. According to the 1990 Population Census of Indonesia, 2.2 million children between the ages of 10 to 14 years, representing about three percent of the total labor force, were economically active. This figure does not include child workers below 10 years of age and children involved in domestic work. This child labor are found in the garment and the wood and rattan furniture industries. There are credible allegations of children working in other industries, including food processing, chocolate, shrimp and seafood processing, and the export-oriented pumice stone industry. This child labor makes them have not good education or maybe have no education.

Domestic service by children often interferes with their right to education in violation of Indonesian and international law. In addition to costs, domestic workers who are permitted to attend school face significant challenges: long hours of work and less sleep interfere with scholastic performance as a child may be tardy, absent, or unable to complete school assignments. Wardina, fourteen, who was attending school and working as a live-in domestic worker was interviewed by Human Rights Watch, she told them: “Everyday I wake up at 5:00 a.m. I clean the house, wash clothes, and water the plants. At 12:00 p.m. I go to school. School ends at 5:30 p.m. and I go back to work, prepare dinner, clean the table, and wash the dishes. Before I go to sleep, I do some homework, but I am very tired by then and not able to study. The employer also has a small business. When she receives an order to bake cookies, I have to help her. This delays me going to school.” How can children take their school in that condition? We have to reduce (perhaps we can stop it) this child labor because Indonesian future is on their hands.

Limiting the working hours of children above the legal working age of fifteen would be an important step towards fulfilling their right to education. An ILO-IPEC official told Human Rights Watch, “Education after working hours is torture. How can [working children] go to school after working ten hours?” ILO-IPEC studies in Bandung, Medan, and Sulawesi on effects of work on education found that a child is able to combine only three hours of work per day in order to effectively study at the same time. There are some other steps to reduce child labor, first increased family incomes, second give children good education so it will helps them learn skills that will help them earn a living, third give children and families social services that help them survive crisis, such as disease, or loss of home and shelter, and fourth control the fertility of family so that families are not burdened by children.

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