Country Profile of Indonesia Indonesia I. Overview Many children work in Indonesia. According to the 1990 Population Census of Indonesia, 2.2 million children between the ages of 10 to 14 years, representing about three percent of the total labor force, were economically active. This figure does not include child workers below 10 years of age and children involved in domestic work. In July 1993, Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, Azwar Anas, said that 2.24 million children are working in rural areas and a quarter-million children in urban areas. There is little hard data on the extent of child labor in export industries.
Child labor is found in the garment and the wood and rattan furniture industries.
There are credible allegations of children working in other industries, including food processing, chocolate, shrimp and seafood processing, and the export-oriented pumice stone industry, but the extent of child labor in these industries and their direct link to export is not documented and thus more research is needed. 4 Many foreign companies use cheap labor, including children, to manufacture semi-finished products for European and North American markets. 5 Child workers are found in the export factories of Tangerang. Most of the children have attended school only up to the third grade and some never at all. The 1990 Population Census found that about one third of the economically active children worked more than 35 hours per week, with almost six percent working 60 hours or more per week.