Despite the school operational fund program (BOS) and the increase in the education budget, the government has responded too late to the crucial child labor issue in the country's least-developed province of East Nusa Tenggara.
The Kupang municipal authorities admitted to monitoring the influx of migrant child laborers from remote regencies and the emergence of child laborers in the city over the past nine months, but said they could not do much to keep them in school, due to the limited budget allocation.
"The city authorities have monitored the child labor issue and high number of school dropouts in the city since last June, but we are not authorized to prevent anyone, including child workers, from migrating to the city to seek jobs, and we cannot be blamed for it," Enos Ndarapoka, head of the city's manpower and transmigration office, told The Jakarta Post at his office recently.
He added hundreds of children had migrated to seek jobs in the city because of financial pressures on their impoverished families in their home villages in remote regencies. The jobs they eventually landed were in the agriculture, trade and domestic work sectors, leaving them underpaid and overworked because of their lack of skills.
Enos also admitted thousands of children in the city and outskirts began working at an early age after being forced to drop out of school because of the food and fuel crisis that hit the province early last year.
"Many parents pulled their children from schools and sent them to work to help support the family; this is considered not only a coping strategy, but a last resort to survive the protracted crisis," he said, adding most impoverished families had abandoned any hopes of bettering their children's futures through education.
The results of a study conducted in January by the manpower and transmigration office indicated that child laborers came mostly from impoverished families living in vulnerable areas in the city and outskirts, who earned a living from fishing, farming, selling produce and working as manual laborers, while living costs in the municipality were very high because most consumer goods, mainly basic commodities, were brought in from Java and Sulawesi.
Enos also criticized the free education program which he said was only a concept and political jargon rather than actual free education, because despite the financial assistance under the BOS, school committees representing parents and school managements had imposed additional charges on students to finance extracurricular activities and pay the salaries of non-permanent teaching staff. In addition, parents had to purchase children's uniforms, books and shoes, and pay for their transportation to and from school.
He said his office, in cooperation with ILO East and other international agencies, had launched a shelter program to provide special training for school dropouts; but its capacity was limited and so far only 30 children were housed at the shelter, while the number of children dropping out of schools in the city had reached into the hundreds.
The city education service lauded the high school attendance rate that reached almost 98 percent in the past five years due to the increase in the education budget and the BOS.
"The dropout figure was only 0.18 percent in junior high schools last year, but a small part of elementary school graduates did not continue on to secondary school because of the prolonged crisis hitting the province," said city education office secretary Yaved Leo.
The administration has increased the education budget from Rp 124.5 billion in 2007 to Rp 168.7 billion in 2008 and Rp 162.8 billion (still to be revised) in 2009, while the BOS has risen from Rp 13.3 billion in 2005 and 2006 to Rp 15 billion in 2007, Rp 15.5 billion in 2008 and Rp 16 billion in 2009, to cover around 82,000 students at 152 elementary and junior high schools in the city.
Yaved said the administration had proposed to the government to double the funding to help impoverished families keep their children in school, but no immediate response was given.
"The lack of a response from the government has discouraged remote regency administrations from stopping residents migrating, including children, to seek jobs in the city," he said.