Vento Saudale, Bogor – Human trafficking remains a serious problem for Indonesia, according to a government official who said underage and West Java women were disproportionately represented in the country's 3,840 trafficking cases recorded last year.

"From that number... underage women still dominate, with 854 trafficking cases. And nationally, the province of West Java contributes the most cases, at 862 cases, or 23 percent," said Imiyarti Fuad, a deputy at the State Ministry for Women's Empowerment and Child Protection.

Imiyarti was speaking at a public information meeting on the prevention of human trafficking, held in Bogor on Tuesday.

Imiyarti said her agency was focusing on two aspects of the issue addressed in the 2007 Law on the Eradication of Human Trafficking: prevention and victim assistance.

She said there was a role for various government agencies and community groups to play in working toward those two goals, through a joint task force laid out in a 2009 presidential decree.

Key approaches involve using local wisdom to help rehabilitate trafficking victims, Imiyarti said, along with providing legal assistance so that exploited women can regain their rights. The police also have an important role to play in catching the perpetrators of human trafficking, she said.

Bogor city administration spokesman Erwin Suryatna agreed, saying that the city wanted to help form the task force on trafficking. He said the initiative would work well in tandem with the administration's own ongoing efforts to eliminate prostitution.

Erwin added that the formation of the task force would not relieve families of their responsibility to act at the local level to minimize trafficking. Similarly, there must be coordination between regional and city governments, he said. Many women are trafficked from rural areas to cities, usually with the involvement of family members.

Last month, a researcher at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), Titik Sumarti, said that a lack of public awareness on the importance of reporting the signs of human trafficking was one reason for high incidence of the crime in West Java.

A spokeswoman for Bogor's Joint Service Center for Women and Children's Empowerment, Ratu Nailamuna, said the local subdistricts of Ciawi, Nanggung and Cijeruk accounted for the most trafficking victims.