Markus Junianto Sihaloho – The Golkar Party insists that it supports a bill on domestic workers' rights currently being proposed for deliberation, despite earlier remarks to the contrary from one of its legislators.

Poempida Hidayatulloh, a Golkar legislator on the House of Representatives' Commission IX, which oversees labor affairs and welfare, said on Thursday that the party fully supported all efforts to push the bill on protection for domestic workers through legislation.

"This bill is important for providing legal protection to domestic workers, who are not covered by the existing [2003 Manpower Law]," he said.

"On that basis, all Golkar members of House Commission IX not only agree to support the bill, but also take a proactive interest in ensuring that ongoing discussions about the bill can bring about legislation that fully covers not just domestic workers, but also their employers and placement agencies."

He added that a statement earlier in the day by Golkar's Nurul Arifin, a member of the House Legislation Council, voicing opposition to the bill was just a reflection of her personal views and did not represent the party's views.

In her remarks, Nurul claimed that the bill could "destroy the social fabric" by formalizing the relationship between domestic workers and their employers.

"This bill shouldn't be aimed at households that employ domestic workers, but rather at the agencies that place the workers in jobs," she said.

"I hope we can stick to the values and traditions that we have always exercised with respect to domestic workers, and not adopt liberal traditions based on materialism."

She claimed that because domestic workers were seen as part of the family, they should not be treated the same as factory workers and thus should not be afforded wage and working condition guarantees enjoyed by the latter.

"We shouldn't let our basic social structure crumble by allowing our thoughts to become poisoned by materialistic thinking," Nurul said.

She added that if the intention of the bill was to protect domestic workers from violence, this was already regulated in other legislation. However, no existing legislation addresses this issue.

Poempida insisted that it was important for the bill to be passed, noting that there were an estimated 10.7 million domestic workers in Indonesia and six million abroad, the vast majority women, for whom no minimum wage, paid or maternity leave, or guarantee of standardized working conditions existed.

"The problem is that there are many employers who treat their domestic workers very badly and refuse to accommodate their interests," he said.

"With this bill, we hope to regulate those interests, which include days off, working hours, basic rights and so forth. The ultimate aim of the bill is to bring domestic workers up to the same level of society as other salaried workers and to treat them as professionals."

Domestic workers' rights organizations are also urging the House to pass the bill as well as the government to ratify the International Labor Organization's Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers.

A petition by the Domestic and Migrant Workers Protection Action Committee (KAPPRTBM) calls on legislators and the manpower minister to ramp up deliberations of the bill and pass it into law.

It also urges the House and the government to apply universal values of human rights to domestic workers, a group that it says is often discriminated against and has its rights flouted with impunity.