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Articles: Business | World Economy & Child labour
- Mr. T.R.Sridhar Prasad. Uppalapati.
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The report found that the following are common: injuries caused by exhaustion; malaria; high blood pressure due to excessive sodium intake; vitamin deficiencies; respiratory and skin problems caused by continuous exposure to damp conditions and salt water; and jellyfish stings. Sanitary facilities on the platforms are nonexistent. Lack of clean water for showers left most children with skin irritations. Exposure to the elements, including strong seasonal winds, and long working hours, left most with coughs, dizziness, nausea.
First aid is rudimentary and insufficient, consisting only of 'iodine tincture for cuts, battery acid for stings and a poultice soaked in diesel [fuel] for stomach ache.' There is no emergency equipment, not even a boat. In effect, children have no way to escape the platforms, so it is not surprising that KKSP has recorded accounts of physical, verbal and sexual abuse. Investigators found that 'most of the children lived in fear of drowning as they were not able to swim.' Some had been bitten by sea snakes accidentally caught in the nets; others had been injured by the equipment used to lift the nets.
Isolation from families led to the use of tobacco, alcohol or hashish. In addition to the physical strain and hardship caused by work on the platforms, children suffer incalculable psychological damage from isolation, separation from their families and abuse at the hands of foremen and older fishermen.Such a working conditions will affect their health and ultimately may lead to their death as they live in poverty and also due to lack of proper medical treatment for them.
Children are sought after as jermal workers because they are more 'manageable.' They are less likely to protest against low wages and long working hours or the isolated conditions. Since the operations are illegal, operators use illegal labor brokers who seek out poor families. The brokers receive an average of 8,000 to 15,000 rupiahs for each child recruited. They promise children wages of 3,000 rupiahs per day -- 38 cents per day -- plus all the food they can eat. These are wages much higher than street children or farm laborers can earn. Yet, tellingly, the recruiters do not seek child laborers in coastal fishing villages, where conditions on the jermals are well known.
Instead, children are typically migrants from inland villages or street children recruited from the bus terminal in Medan City. Investigators found that while parents sometimes knew that employment on the jermals would be hazardous to the health of their children, they seldom knew the extent of these hazards. Abject poverty and promises from the recruiters led them to let their children go. Recruiting agents promise the young boys good wages for working hard, an appealing prospect for those living in impoverished peasant families. According to Pardoen's survey, seventy percent of the boys had fathers working as plantation laborers or tenant farmers, with an average income of 37,000 rupiahs per week.
The labor system on the jermals requires that the boys stay for three months at least, as they are paid only quarterly by operators. They are allowed to leave the jermal only if the operator has found a substitute. Wages are paid only after a substitute has been found. Most jermal children interviewed in Pardoen's study (74 percent) received only 10,000 rupiahs per week, or 120,000 for the three month period, the equivalent of about 17 cents per day. But there are no written contracts and a dozen conditions and exceptions that reduce even this meager sum.
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