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At least four million of 58.8 million children across the nation are in employment, and of those at least 1.7 million are considered child laborers, according to a 2009 survey by the Central Statistics Agency and the International Labor Organization.

The study found that of the 4.05 million children employed, 2.02 million, or 50 percent, worked at least 21 hours per week, and 1.01 million, or 25 percent, toiled for 12 hours a week.

Uzair Suhaimi, chief of population statistics at the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), said on Thursday that this was the first comprehensive study of its kind on child labor in Indonesia, and was integrated in the 2009 National Labor Force Survey (Sakernas).

“Compared to figures from countries in the Asia Pacific, these figures are relatively small,” he said. “The percentage [6.9 percent of 58.8 million] is small, but because we are a massive nation even that small percentage seems big when we actually study the figures.

“Generally, though, we are better off than most countries,” Uzair said during an event on Thursday at a Jakarta hotel to discuss the survey’s findings.

He added that the survey figures were gathered from 248 districts across the country’s 33 provinces. The children in employment were between the ages of 5 and 17.

“The BPS will hand the results to the related ministries and working group to work on the follow-up policies and actions to tackle this. One of them is the Social Affairs Ministry,” Uzair said.

The survey, detailed in the book “Working Children in Indonesia 2009,” says the definition of child labor includes working children between the ages of 13 and 14 who work more than 15 hours per week, and children between the ages of 15 and 17 years who work more than 40 hours a week.

Seto Mulyadi, chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak), said the figures in the survey were “unreasonable and unacceptable.”

“Those numbers should not be seen as a small percentage compare to the total population, but must be looked at as a total of four million. This is the violation of the rights of four million children,” Seto said. “Nobody, much less the government, should call this a small number. They should seriously study this and do something to reduce the numbers.”

The survey notes that working children — mostly still in school, doing unpaid work for their families or involved in the agricultural sector or service industry — worked an average of 25.7 hours per week. Those categorized as child laborers worked an average of 35.1 hours per week.

Of the 4.05 million working children, some 20.7 percent, or at least 838,000, worked in hazardous conditions as they toiled for more than 40 hours each week.

Arum Ratnawati, chief technical adviser of the ILO’s Child Labor Program, said on Thursday that the survey results could be used to “redesign policies,” particularly for children still in school but working long hours each week.

“They will of course be prone to dropping out. We need to work with teachers and how teachers should be more sensitive to such special cases,” Arum said.

The survey says that while 2.13 million children were found to be studying in school as well as working, at least 1.6 million of them were also performing housekeeping duties on top of school and work.

Bijoy Raychaudhuri, from the ILO, agreed with Uzair on the results of the survey, saying that the numbers were actually reasonable and “not very high.”

He did say, however, that it would be difficult to make comparisons with neighboring countries because, in fact, Indonesia was the
very first country to conduct such a comprehensive study on child workers.

“ There was one, in Cambodia, but it was a 2002 survey, and mind you that the data was collected in 2000 to 2001,” Raychauduri said, emphasizing the difficulties in comparing the results with some other countries.

He added that Indonesian lawmakers should use this data to push for policies on eliminating child labor.