Tantyo Bangun and Jonathan Sprague – The west wind shakes the jermal – a fishing platform perched precariously on log stilts in the shallow seas off north Sumatra. It is some hours after midnight. "Wake up! Your turn to pull the net!" shouts the foreman, shaking Dian and four other boys. They head out into the pre-dawn dark. For the next 12, 16, even 20 hours they will work – lifting the heavy nets filled with teri, a small, anchovy-like fish, sorting the teri from stinging jellyfish or seasnakes, then boiling, salting and drying the catch. Then, after snatching a few hours of sleep, they will work again the next day, and the next, month after month.

Dian is a jermal kid. He says he is 17 years old, although he looks 14 or 15. In distant Jakarta, rival politicians spar over who can form a government as voters wonder whether democratic hopes fired by the first free polls in four decades will be answered. But that is a different world from here, where more than 5,000 kids, 10 to 17 years old, live and work on 1,500 or so jermal. Their world consists of rickety wooden platforms not much larger than a tennis court, 15 to 50 km off the coast, perched meters above the waves. Perhaps 10 workers live on each. Usually there is little in the way of safety equipment. Living amenities are minimal. Often only the foreman has a proper bed.

Once aboard, the boys are cut off from families and friends. The minimum stay is three months. "Those who go home before three months won't get any pay – that's the boss's rule," says Dian. And the wage is meager for all that backbreaking work. Beginners get $7.50 a month, while an experienced boy may get $12. Maybe. Owners usually deduct the cost of food, often without explanation. And since the money is handed over only when a boy is leaving, complaining is useless. The pay and conditions fall well below minimum levels required by law and may be illegal for children. Nonetheless the kids come, driven by necessity, often unaware of what they are getting into and sometimes tricked or virtually kidnapped by unscrupulous agents.

The poor pay and hard work are just the beginning. Jermal kids tend to be chronically tired from the long hours and irregular rest, increasing the probability of accidents and injuries. Nutrition is poor. Meals consist almost entirely of fish and rice; vegetables are a rarity. Medical treatment is primitive or non-existent. Isolation breeds emotional problems. There are fights among the children every day. Worst is the abuse – emotional, verbal, physical, even sexual – at the hands of older workers or the foreman. Not every jermal is so hellish, but none are places for a child. "The first three weeks I almost couldn't stand it," says Dian. "But since the boss's rule was that I could get my money only if I worked at least three months, I forced myself to stay." He has now been aboard five months, without once setting foot on land.

Some kids cannot stand it, but leaving requires the foreman's permission – which is not always forthcoming. Some try to swim for shore. Last year, Husni Hasibuan, 14, and Amin Soleh Pangaribuan, 13, tried to escape their jermal, according to the Indonesian Institute for Child Advocacy. They used a large pan for boiling fish as a boat, but it quickly capsized and they were soon separated. Husni swam for an hour before he found the stump of an old jermal on which he clung until he was rescued by a passing fishing boat. Amin swam for five hours before he too was found by a fisherman. They were lucky. In October 1996, 13-year old Jumadi fell through a hole in the deck of his jermal while winching up a net; Miswan, 14, dove in to save his friend. Their bodies washed ashore a few days later.

Child labor was not a major concern for Indonesian authorities for decades, though Jakarta seems to have woken up to the problem since the fall of former president Suharto. The government last April finally ratified the 1973 Minimum Age Convention of the International Labor Organization. In October, the ILO, which has long targeted jermal kids as a priority concern, and Indonesian authorities will to start working together to get children off the fishing platforms and keep them off.

Operators say their days are numbered for economic reasons. "We can't compete with the large trawling net," one says. "The repair and maintenance cost is too big. Jermals can only operate for five more years." But five years can be a lifetime for a child trapped on a jermal in the middle of the sea.