•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Domestic Workers Deserve Protection

Amnesty International calls on Indonesia’s House of Representatives to provide legal protection to female domestic workers in accordance with international human rights law and standards.

An estimated 2.6 million female domestic workers are currently not protected by legislation to safeguard their rights, in particular the 2003 Manpower Act. The Manpower Act itself discriminates against domestic workers — virtually all of whom are women and girls — and leaves them without legal rights protections, such as reasonable limitations on working hours, remuneration adequate to secure a life with dignity and provisions for rest and holidays. The result is that female domestic workers live and work in abusive conditions.

We urge the legislature to acknowledge that, like every other human being, domestic workers have rights. Female domestic workers should be granted equal protection along with other workers. Such a move would help ensure they are no longer vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

We welcome the inclusion of a domestic workers protection law in the national 2010 legislative agenda. House Commission IX, which is overseeing the bill, should ensure that domestic workers and their representatives can provide input into the formulation of the bill and that it remains consistent with international law.

Amnesty International

Idle Agents Make Long Entry Waits

I came through immigration at the Jakarta airport a few weeks ago and had a two-hour wait to get through. First, there was a huge line waiting for the visa on arrival, which took half an hour to process. Then we moved on to the immigration entry counters where there was another huge line.

Although the lines of people were long there were many immigration staffers just walking around doing nothing. Why doesn’t someone make sure these people work to offer a quick clearance and let travelers be on their way?

Peter Briant

Sending a Message With Our Money

It is hard to comprehend why some palm oil companies in Malaysia and Indonesia still do not understand why their members come in for so much international criticism (“Besieged Palm Oil Growers Plan Malaysia Strategy,” April 21).

The core issues are really very simple. The palm oil industry has been responsible for destroying millions of hectares of rain forest and wiping out tens of millions of animals in the process. The industry is responsible for the deaths of many thousands of orangutans and about 1,000 currently in rescue centers.

Such facts may not be of any concern to these companies, but they matter to consumers, who have every right to insist the products they use or consume do not contribute to such wholesale and wanton environmental destruction. Customers are increasingly using their buying power to send a message.

Finally, there is the question of integrity and trust. Even members of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, working — in theory at least — to stringent regulations, have been caught breaking the rules.

If any palm oil company thinks a consumer would for a second trust a certificate conjured up by a bunch of RSPO renegades sitting around a table in either Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur, it could prove to be a very expensive error.

The smart companies will comply fully with the RSPO. It makes good commercial sense to do so. And it is these same companies that will reap the benefits of increased sales as more and more customers give them their business.

Sean Whyte

Chief Executive, Nature Alert England

SBY, Time to Act To Save Orangutans

Why does it come as no surprise that a list published this month of the 12 most endangered species on the planet includes the Sumatran orangutan?

Shamefully for Indonesia, along with the Cuban crocodile, the Grenadian dove and the 59 white-headed langur monkeys left on an island off Vietnam, the Wildlife Conservation Society has identified a few thousand Sumatran orangutans left in small pockets of forest in Northern Sumatra.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke this month of the need to halt Indonesia’s massive illegal logging problem. Maybe if he stopped turning a blind eye to all the palm oil plantations, mining concessions and legal logging concessions his government allows and actually acted on his words, the Sumatran orangutan and its Bornean counterpart might actually survive past the next five years.

The power to remove the Sumatran orangutan from the endangered list lies entirely with the president and his colleagues in the Forestry Ministry. Orangutan charities with limited funds can only do so much by rescuing a small number of the thousands of orangutans stranded every year in palm oil plantations.

I implore the president of Indonesia to finally put the money foreign governments have given him to stop deforestation where his mouth is and act to save the orangutans before they disappear altogether.

Jeanie Elford