Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Edi Hardum – Indonesia's labor system opens the door to worker exploitation and slavery, as evidenced by a recent case in Tangerang that has gripped the nation, an activist said.
Anis Hidayah of Migrant Care said that slavery in Tangerang was not shocking given Indonesian law is unsympathetic to the plight of workers. "The legal system opened such an opportunity," Anis told a forum in Jakarta on Friday.
Anis said that human rights is not the top priority for Indonesian policy makers, saying the labor laws reflect that fact. She added that Migrant Care often found similar cases of Indonesian migrant workers being exploited at home before they were sent overseas.
Payaman Simanjuntak, a labor analyst, said that the Tangerang incident, in which dozens of workers at a factory were allegedly held in slave-like conditions for months, reflected a lack of supervision by the Banten provincial manpower agency.
"This is a slap in the face for [Manpower Minister] Muhaimin [Iskandar] and labor supervisors," Payaman said on Friday.
Payaman said labor supervisors in district, provincial and national government and had been too focused on large companies at the expense of smaller ones like that operating in Tangerang. "Small companies should have also been supervised... [and this] should become a priority now," he said.
Payaman called on Muhaimin to train manpower agencies at the district and provincial level to prevent such cases from repeating. "The case was embarrassing and it reflected poorly on all of us," he said.
Payaman said the manpower agencies at all levels of government should have data on all companies, both big and small. "Supervision would be easy if data on all were available," he said.
The Tangerang case was uncovered when two workers, Andi Gunawan, 20, and Junaidi, 22, escaped from a kitchenware factory after working for four months in captivity and without pay.
After escaping, the workers and their families filed a report with the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). The human rights agency, Tangerang Police and the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) on May 3 raided the factory, located in Lebak Wangi village.
Six workers, several of whom were minors, were found locked in a room. A total of 46 workers forced to work in poor conditions were released from the factory.
"We have detained five suspects, while two others remain at large because they resigned from their job two weeks before we busted the factory," Tangerang Police detective unit chief Comr. Shinto Silitonga told the Jakarta Globe last weekend.
Police arrested Yuki Irawan, the owner of the kitchenware factory, who allegedly held his workers in captivity while forcing them to work without pay.