Anushka Shahjahan – The national government has been tackling child poverty and improving social protection for citizens via several programs, but progress is hampered without the full support of the regional governments, a representative from the International Labor Organization said.

Dede Shinta, national program officer at the ILO said several issues continue to pose challenges to the government programs, holding it back from proper implementation, such as the lack of understanding or knowledge about the policies and regulations in the regional levels and the lack of commitment in provinces where child labor has not been made a priority.

Furthermore, child labor has become a major source of income for most low income families in Indonesia, while education is often neglected.

Government data from September last year showed that 28.59 million people were living in poverty, with income at less than a dollar a day.

"Children begin working and living on the street due to economic exploitation by their parents and this is allowed to happen due to the negligence of the state," said Seto Mulyadi, chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection's Board of Trustees (Komnas).

The government-established National Action Committee on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor has prepared a National Action Plan aiming to end child labor practices by 2020. It aims to take children between the ages of seven to 15 from very poor households out of the workforce.

But Seto said such efforts may not suffice in challenging the core reasons behind child labor.

"The government has a number of policies and programs being carried out but they don't address the economic roots of the problem," he said. "But street children can only be helped if their parents are helped not only by the government but also the community and international non-government organizations such as the UN," he continued.

Merry, the operational manager of Indonesian Street Children Organization (ISCO), said despite providing supporting with school fees, uniforms and text books for the street children, many of them preferred working on the streets instead of going to school.

"Every year, the number of children in ISCO programs drop by 5 to 10 percent," Merry said in a written statement to the Jakarta Globe.

ISCO is among the local non-governmental organizations that have filled in the gaps between the government's programs as it aims to prevent marginalized children from becoming street children or child laborers.

Merry emphasized that the government should take responsibility of providing financial assistance to marginalized children and provide them with basic needs like food and education. She added that monitoring the programs was as important as their implementation.

"Any program would be unsuccessful without adequate monitoring and evaluation," she said.

The Manpower Ministry earlier this year rolled out a new program aimed at providing both financial aid and monitoring in its bid to end child labor practices by 2020.

With the program, child laborers will be removed from their workplaces and temporarily placed in shelters in order to undergo a special mentoring program for four months, during which they would also receive a monthly allowance of Rp 250,000 ($23).

In addition to the ministry's program, the government itself has this year allocated Rp 287 trillion or 20 percent of the state budget on education and policies that encourage higher education.

However, while government policies may encourage more children to enter school, the Unesco report highlights that little progress has been made in reducing the rate at which children leave school.

Unicef data suggests that the number of enrolled children varies largely among regions within Indonesia, signifying a lack of balanced monitoring across the nation. World Vision has put Indonesia in 100th place out of 176 countries in a study on health inequality for children.

"The national government has improved their policies on compulsory education where students would need to complete 12 mandatory years of education. There is also a scholarship program for poor students (BSM)," Dede said.

She added that consistency of the implementation of policies throughout local regions and their effective monitoring remains one of the biggest issues.

Social protection

Aside from child protection, the government has also been rolling out social protection programs. Today, 60 percent of Indonesia's 240 million people are covered by health insurance while a government health waiver for the poor, Jamkesmas, covers 76 million people. In addition, state-run insurance companies cover another 45 million people.

Last year, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced his plan to offer universal health coverage in Indonesia beginning in 2014 and aiming for full coverage by 2019.

Robert Yates, a senior health economist from the World Health Organization said the program was not too farfetched.

"Yes, it [universal health coverage] is possible," said Robert Yates, a senior health economist at World Health Organization. "The government is issuing big institutional changes to try and begin to merge the different health insurance schemes."

However, Yates said it would be necessary for the level of public financing to be improved in order to achieve universal health coverage.

"Indonesia is a very low spender, using only between 1 and 1.2 percent of its GDP on health care. This needs to increase rapidly," he said.

"Indonesia spends about 3 percent of its GDP on fuel subsidies and if they cut it by a third and add it to health care, universal health coverage can become achievable," he said, referring to regional countries partaking in similar programs and their steady contribution of 2 percent of the GDP in universal health coverage.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had initially called for an initial fund of Rp 25 trillion for the implementation of the program, which aims to cover all Indonesians by the year 2019. The fund, according to the CIA Factbook, was one-fifth of 1 percent of Indonesia's GDP in 2012.

Yudhoyono said the funds needed for the Social Security Organizing Body (BPJS) was justifiable because it would ensure health coverage for all citizens.

While the universal health coverage program is not the only government health care program, the percentage of its GDP Indonesia spends on health care remains lower than that of most of the world, including Nepal and Thailand according to WHO data.