Ronna Nirmala – Around 5,000 people rallied in front of the House of Representatives on Friday to demand lawmakers ratify pass the much-discussed and delayed social security bill.
The number was far lower than the 35,000 people labor leaders had earlier said were coming.
The thousands of protestors, drawn largely from the ranks of labor unions in the Greater Jakarta area, yelled, chanted and participated in a mass prayer in the hopes of convincing the House to pass the bill, which seeks to provide universal social security coverage.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and top House officials recently agreed to delay the passage of the important bill, saying that more time was needed to discuss it and iron out disagreements over several complex issues, including the merging of four state-run insurance agencies into one body.
Fajar Murdaningsih, a worker at Yamaha Music in Cibitung, West Java, said on Friday that she and 36 coworkers arrived in Senayan in a rented bus to show their dedication to seeing the bill, also known as BPJS, passed quickly.
"For a laborer like me, who has a limited salary, I cannot go to a hospital if I don't have money for a down payment. If I don't bring money they [hospital officers] won't serve me."
Fajar said that although her employer gave her insurance through the state-run Jamsostek scheme, the coverage was limited and prohibitively complicated to use.
Nuki Afriatno, a student from the University of Indonesia, was taking part in the rally as part of the struggle to secure the rights of future workers.
"As a member of the young generation, I have to join in defending the rights of many people," he said. "Moreover, I may be part of them in the next three years. I'm going to work also, so what I did today is for my future also."
During the middle of the rally, which started at around 10 a.m., Rieke Diah Pitaloka, a committee member from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and migrant worker activist, emerged from the House building to show her solidarity with the protestors.
"I left the plenary because I heard there are thousands of people yelling in front of this building to voice their demands on the social security bill," she said to the crowd.
"There are so many parties who had promised their voters in elections years ago, promising that they would fight for laborers' rights, but then after they got the chairs in the DPR [legislature], they seemed to forget what they had promised to their voters, and I don't want to be like them. That's why I'm here."
Rieke also said that she would try to speak to House Speaker Marzuki Alie to convince him to speed up discussions on the bill.