Ulma Haryanto – More than 7,800 Indonesians laid off as a result of the global economic crisis filed complaints with the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute last year, the institute's director said on Monday.

Nurkholis Hidayat said the complaints were filed to highlight several issues, including wrongful dismissal and being laid off without severance pay or proper notice.

"The 125 complaint reports were filed by 7,863 people last year. This is a clear jump from 2008, when 70 reports involving just 2,064 people were filed," Nurkholis said, quoting figures from the institute's 2009 annual report.

The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) received 1,061 complaints in total last year, or 83 fewer than in 2008.

However, a trend was recorded throughout 2009, where people united to collectively file complaints about violations of their rights, Nurkholis said.

"The people are more organized. Although the number of cases we received decreased – from 1,144 cases in 2008 to 1,061 – the number of people involved increased exponentially, from 45,000 to 201,000," he said.

"We are predicting that this will continue in relation to the current president's promises of welfare. There will be a rise in the number of people who demand more transparency, and there is going to be a new law that will provide room for people to voice their concerns.

"Added to that, we have more people from across the provinces coming into Jakarta every year so that will also contribute to the rise in the number of urban poor."

According to Nurkholis, this will be a reaction to the unchanged system of government that still cannot accommodate the majority of the people.

"The increase [in complaints] is related to the failure of the government to provide for its people, and they also fail to protect the people from those with money who break the law," he added.

Furthermore, there were 138 reports of violations of civil and political rights last year, affecting 6,620 people. Nurkholis claimed that 93 percent of those who violated civil and political rights were police officers.

Complaints about violations of civil and political rights were the second most-reported issue to LBH. Some 227 reports involving 172,195 people were also filed in 2009 over labor-rights issues.

He also criticized on the "underperforming" National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the National Police Commission, which he believed had failed to serve the public's interests.