Domestic workers in Indonesia and abroad face mental and physical abuse from their employers.

Most households in Indonesian cities have one or more domestic workers to clean and even guard the house, take care of the laundry and the children, cook, etc.

The domestic workers, known as pembantu (servants), wake up at dawn before their employers, and sleep only after their employers have had their dinner and gone to bed. These domestic workers live in the same household as their employers, and some never get a day off. They are not allowed to socialise, if even with the neighbours’ domestic workers. They are shown no clemency and are, in all senses of the word, trapped in homes of their employers.

Many of the said employers treat their domestic workers unkindly: they scold them when they make even the simplest mistakes and have nothing to say when they have done well.

Efforts have been made to protect domestic workers but they seem to have had little, if any, effect. For example, the Provincial Government of Jakarta has issued some by-laws to protect domestic workers, but news reports about bad and inhumane treatment are still prevalent.

The central government has prepared a bill for the Protection of Domestic Workers, but unfortunately the House of Representatives (DPR) postponed the discussion for reasons that are unclear.

This poster created by the United for Foreign Domestic Workers’ Rights was published in Singapore media to raise awareness of the plight of domestic workers.

In order to provide a “bird's eye view” of the suffering that some domestic workers endure, I quote an article from the Malaysian English daily, The Star:

After a grueling, 18-hour day, 15-year-old Kaminah domestic worker would rest her head on a bag filled with blood-stained clothes, sleeping on cold ceramic tiles outside the bathroom.

The blood was her own, from the beatings inflicted by her employer on a daily basis. “[Whenever I got a beating] I would always think of my family,” Kaminah told The Jakarta Post. “Late at night, before going to sleep, I would think about my father and mother and feel very sad. I miss my parents a lot.”

UNICEF estimates that more 100,000 Indonesian women and children are trafficked annually within the country and abroad, with about one in three being under the age of 18. Pressured by families or lured with promises of work, an alarming number of girls and women find themselves in conditions of virtual slavery, both within Indonesia and abroad.

A recently released report by the U.S. State department on human trafficking lists Indonesia as a Tier-2 country for trafficking, for not fully complying with standards set by the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

“There is a particularly big problem with Indonesian women being trafficked as domestic workers, ending up basically enslaved in conditions in the Middle East, Malaysia, and to a lesser extent countries like Singapore,” says Elaine Pearson, Deputy Director of the Asia Division for Human Rights Watch.

“Part of the problem is that there is not effective oversight of recruitment agencies in Indonesia.”

But for some, the root of the problem lies not with the agencies, but with rampant poverty.

“I really wanted to finish school but we didn’t have enough money to pay for tuition,” another girl, Kiya, told The Jakarta Post. “So I decided to work as a domestic worker and help my family.”

This post was originally published on Multibrand in June 2010.