Jakarta – The government should immediately issue a regulation requiring occupational safety and health (OSH) programs in small enterprises and home industries to avoid unnecessary accidents at work and a reduction in employee productivity, according to an expert with the International Labor Organization.
"Extending legal protection to all workers, in both the formal and informal sectors, will increase the safety culture at workplaces," said Ingrid Christensen, the senior OSH specialist for the ILO's subregional office for South Asia.
She said that Sri Lanka had enacted legislation that required all companies, regardless of how many workers they employed, to implement OSH programs.
"Thailand is also preparing similar legislation to cover domestic workers," she said.
More than two million people die of work-related causes and 160 million fall ill globally due to workplace hazards each year, according to data from ILO. A significant number of deaths come from workers in small enterprises, where conditions are often very poor and employees have no form of labor protection.
Although Law No. 13/2003 on labor stipulates that all employers must have an OSH system in place, the necessary government regulation to implement the law has not been issued.
The Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration said last year that they were preparing a draft regulation that would provide guidelines for OSH standards in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that employ less than 50 people. More than 90 percent of the 170,000 companies registered with the ministry are SMEs, which employ the majority of Indonesia's workforce of about 95 million.
As of last year, less than 400 of the approximately 15,000 large companies in Indonesia had complied with the OSH requirements, according to the ministry's data. The ministry has blamed the lack of labor inspectors for the low compliance rate. Data from the state-owned insurance firm PT Jamsostek, showed that last year, seven people died of work-related causes each day, while 38 workers suffered accidents daily.
The ILO estimates that this number is higher due to underreporting and because Jamsostek only covers 7.5 million active workers. It estimated that work-related accidents claimed 46 lives daily last year.