M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – Novi had to rush to her factory because she was afraid of being late for her night shift and it never occurred to her that something awful was going to happen at work.
As it turned out she fell asleep on the job and nearly had a finger cut off while doing at the assembly line of a cotton factory. "I dozed off a little while, and I inadvertently cut the tip of my middle finger off," Novi, 22 , told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Little did she realize then that her misfortune would become a driving force for her fellow workers to put pressure on the company to apply the required standard safety measures and join the social security schemes for laborers.
Many companies in Indonesia neglect to abide by the on-the-job safety rules where more than 100,000 accidents happen in work places every year. What happened to Novi, 22, was just an example of the situation that a lowly-paid laborer must endure as a result of poor labor protection and toothless government regulations.
Although Novi was immediately rushed to a 24-hour company clinic after the accident, she had to wait until the following morning to have her injury treated because the clinic's 24-hour staff were also apparently dozing off for awhile. "The clinic in my work place was indeed supposed to be open for 24 hours, but since the 1998 troubles it is very unreliable, and the company did not want to uphold the 24-hour-ruling," she explained.
If the clinic was operating that night, Novi's finger could have been saved, her fellow workers believe. Worse still, Novi had a hard time obtaining compensation from the social security company PT Jamsostek. "It took me quite a long time to get a letter of recommendation from my company before I could go to ask for compensation from Jamsostek," she said, adding that she eventually got Rp 590,000 (US$ 65) from PT Jamsostek, which she deemed an inadequate amount.
Another tragedy regarding workers' misfortune was also experienced by Naib, who once worked for a pulp company in Cakung, North Jakarta. His job was to feed bamboo through a mill shredder. One day the bamboo clogged up the machine so he decided he would help the bamboo through with his leg. However, his other leg got caught in the shredder with tragic results. "The mill was not equipped with safety gear, and the company had time and again promised to provide it, but never kept its promise until that tragic event took place," said Malik, a friend of Naib.
Two months after the incident Naib's health deteriorated markedly and he passed away. The company gave him Rp 3 million (US$ 330) as compensation although he had worked for many years with them. Naib could not claim compensation from PT Jamsostek as his company had never registered him as participant of the social security program.
The high number of workplace accidents was affirmed by a recent report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) which said that, with 57,000 work-related accidents in the first six months of 2002, Indonesia's worker safety measures constituted the worst in the Southeast Asian region.
"That such a high number of accidents prevail in companies across the country does not surprise me, as work safety is relegated to second place after minimum wage fulfillment," said Bomer Pasaribu, a former manpower minister. He also said that lack of supervision of labor safety was the main reason for the high number of accidents. "The government lacks the personnel to implement laws on labor safety. There is only one official to oversee 700 companies while the ideal number is one for every 50 establishments," he said.
The proper implementation of the law on labor safety has also been the concern of another labor activist. "Thus far, I don't see any enactment of the labor safety legislation, to the point where companies perceive the violation of those rulings as no mistake at all," Dita Indah Sari from the National Front for the Struggle of Indonesian Workers (FNPBI).
Realizing that laborers could not count on the government to uphold the law, Dita suggested that laborers must better organize themselves so that they could exert stronger pressure on the employers. "Workers in danger-prone occupations such as construction, forestry and fishery should have a stronger trade union," she said. Labor activists have agreed that there must be a stronger labor union which could truly defend and protect the workers' interests.
"After the incident with Novi, we set up a labor union in that company, and afterwards the company heeds our demands for a social security program," said Eka, a labor activist in Penjaringan, North Jakarta. Now, laborers in the company have three programs of workers security, comprising accidents, retirement and death security.