Andreas D. Arditya, Jakarta – A rights watchdog revealed on Tuesday that violations against workers' rights were still prevalent in Jakarta in 2011.
The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) said in its year-end report that employment relations issues and other labor-related problems, including regulated rights, worker criminalization, discrimination and domestic workers, were among the most-common complaints filed at the institute between November 2010 and November 2011.
LBH Jakarta chairman Nurkholis Hidayat said that of the total 959 complaints of alleged human rights abuses it received in 2011, 175 were related to labor rights violations. In 2010, the watchdog received 1,027 complaints, but only 428 complaints concerned human rights violations in Greater Jakarta.
"Jakarta workers are still subjected to abnormal conditions and still face violence, pressure, terror and threats," Nurkholis said at a press conference at the watchdog's office in Central Jakarta.
The activist also said that city workers were not able to fully exercise their rights to expression and assembly through labor unions. Nurkholis said that employers and companies had followed in the footsteps of the government in refusing to protect and uphold workers rights.
Restaria F. Hutabarat, LBH Jakarta head of research department, said that most of the labor-related complaints involved violations in employment relations and regulated rights.
Restaria said employers had failed to provide proper wages, labor insurance and freedom of assembly. "These are among the basic rights that have been regulated by the government. However, we have seen a lack in law enforcement effort by the authorities," she said.
LBH Jakarta also stressed that there had been violations of rights to housing by the city administration. Edy H. Gurning, another LBH lawyer, said that the administration had, throughout 2011, failed to provide certainty for residents whose land and houses were scheduled for eviction.
"In many areas, the city did not condemn their property but at the same time refused to recognize their residential legitimacy," Edy said.
The areas, he said, included kampungs in Pluit, North Jakarta, where the city planned to construct a dam, and along the banks of the Ciliwung River, which the city aimed to rehabilitate.
LBH Jakarta forecast that hundreds of thousands of people living along Jakarta's river banks would likely be evicted as the city work worked to dredge and restore the capital's waterways as part of the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI). At least 200,000 people living on the banks of the Ciliwung River alone would be affected by the program.
Under the JEDI program, a joint project of the ministry and the Jakarta Public Works Agency, 13 rivers will be dredged, including the Cakung River in East Jakarta, the Sunter, and Kamal and Angke rivers in North Jakarta.
The administration has spent the last two years waiting for the central government to disburse US$150 million from a World Bank loan to pay for the JEDI project. The Jakarta administration said that the long-awaited project would start in March next year.
"On the surface, it appears the city has not had an eviction problem this year, but underneath it's burning and ready to burst," Edy said.