Yantri Yohana Lau flew from Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, to Jakarta in mid-July. Yantri was then still 18 years old.
Two days earlier, for the first time in her life, Yantri left her hometown in the village of Muriabang, Pantar Tengah District, Alor Regency.
From Bagang Harbor, she took a ferry for which she paid Rp70,000, leaving for Kupang. Yantri just received an offer to work as domestic worker in Jakarta from a neighbor she called 'Little Gentleman'.
For Yantri, the job offer was just a runway from a fight with her father, who frequently got drunk and committed domestic violence.
Before taking the decision, which she calls a careless one now, Yantri and her father had been involved in a fight that led him not to recognize her as her biological daughter any longer.
Then, in an early morning, Yantri left her house at the time when she should complete a series of school tests to pass to the higher, last grade at her senior high school.
"The boss offered me a salary of between Rp1 million to Rp1.5 million. The amount, according to the boss, had been very big in Jakarta," Yantri recalled her experience to CNN Indonesia.
After a six-hour journey from Pantar Tengah, transiting in Alor and arriving in Kupang, Yantri was picked up by another boss named Edo. She was brought to the house of Edo, who was known as a former policeman. In the house, Yantri met with three young women, who also wanted to go to Jakarta.
Upon arrival at the Soekarno-Hatta airport in Tangerang, Banten, Yantri was picked up by another boss again. She and her three friends were sent to a boarding house, which she knew later that it was located in East Jakarta.
At the boarding house, Yantri met with hundreds of women, mostly from East Nusa Tenggara. Yantri and her three friends did not immediately stay at the shelter for domestic worker candidates. They were allowed to stay at the house of a couple who owned the agency providing domestic workers.
Yantri had a chance to attend the classes of English, Malay and techniques of taking care of children. Every day, at the boarding house, she and hundreds of other women did their activities in a big room. They slept and ate there.
The chronicle of Yantri’s oddissey almost ended up in a tragedy. During her first week at the boarding house, Yantri accidently read a writing, saying 'for female employees' near the boarding house’ bathroom.
The first child of three siblings could not hold her fears. Some domestic worker candidates she asked admitted that they had been trapped. They were offered to work in Jakarta, but they would be instead sent to Malaysia as overseas workers.
Worried about being sent to an unknown country, Yantri and her three friends looked for a way to escape from the shelter. Luckily, one of them managed to hide her cellular phone from an inspection by the agent’s staffs.
Yantri, the only one among them who has relatives in Jakarta, then called her elder brother. After waiting for almost a week, her brother found the shelter like she had described on the side of a road in East Jakarta.
Her brother argued with the boarding house’ security guard who kept refusing to let Yantri and her three friends go.
“My brother bluffed that he had a relative who was a military officer. I don’t know how, but they finally let us go,” Yantri said.
Joining a “Clean” Agent
Good fate still belonged to Yantri’s life. Being freed from a bad agent, Yantri and her three friends were introduced by her relative to a foundation that provides service of baby sitters in South Jakarta.
Established in 1978, the foundation was initiated by a religious organization. Unlike other agents that provide services of domestic workers and baby sitters, the foundation was not established for any commercial, but social objectives.
Ancilla, the foundation’s executive, confirmed Yantri’s story. “She was saved by her relative to work here,” Ancilla said early this week.
Different from the recruitment system of the Association of All Indonesia Domestic Worker Providers (APPSI), the foundation where Yantri works now does not actively look for domestic worker candidates.
The foundation has no field workers, which are brokers or what they usually call as sponsors. They are only willing to accept baby sitter candidates who have obtained recommendations from the alumnae of the foundation or members of their religious community.
“In other words, they are recommended by those we trust, usually alumnae. It is not about guarantee, but we can’t immediately understand someone’s characters,” Ancilla said.
Most of baby sitter candidates trained by the foundation come from the same area as Yantri’s. They receive various kinds of training to do domestic works in two months.
Those who have been considered of having mastered skills to take care of children are included into the waiting list. Ancilla said that her foundation receives 20 to 30 requests of baby sitters daily.
Since 2009, the number of training participants in the foundation has been decreasing and failed to reach 15 people annually. Finally, the foundation must really select candidates of employers for their students.
If the foundation’s executives see that the candidates of employers have good personalities and are not included in the black list, after some conversation, they will let their students to select their candidates of employers.
If the student has chemistry with the employer candidate, the foundation will then ask them to make a working agreement. Ancilla said that the document is made as a binder of trust between them.
A month after she passed the training, in October 2014 exactly, Yantri found her new home. Now, she has been taking care of her employer’s child for almost a year.
Domestic Workers’ Pockets
Yantri’s hometown is one of the pockets of domestic workers and baby sitters in Indonesia. The fact was revealed by APPSI Chairman Mashudi a few times ago in Depok, West Java.
“The pockets of domestic workers are in Central Java, West Java, Lampung and East Nusa Tenggara. The four provinces significantly send candidates of domestic workers or baby sitters,” he said.
Ancilla said that when she joined the foundation in 2002, almost 90 percent of baby sitter candidates she trained came from Java island. Later, after the administration of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono initiated the 12-year compulsory education, the percentage has kept going down.
“Since the government has obliged education until senior high school, only few Javanese are willing to work as baby sitters. Most of them choose to be overseas workers, sales promotion girls or factory workers. So finally, the job as baby sitters are taken over by those from East Nusa Tenggara,” Ancilla said.
The factors of low education and economy, according to Ancilla, have encouraged East Nusa Tenggara women to work in this informal sector.
The Regional Bureau of Statistics of Alor Regency recorded that in 2014, about 89.7 percent of residents in Pantar Tengah District of Alor Regency works as farmers. The remaining ones work as civil servants, fishermen and traders.
In Yantri’s hometown, which consists of 10 sub-districts, there are only three senior high schools. In 2013, the Central Bureau of Statistics recorded that only 151 people continued their education to senior high school. The figure was not equal with the number of students at the lower level, junior high school, that had reached 520 students.
Working in town is not a difficult option taken by Pantar Tengah residents. Ancilla said that baby sitters, who passed from her foundation, receive salaries of between Rp1.5 million to Rp3.5 million a month, depending on their working experiences.
The expenditures of domestic workers are not significant. The employers are required to provide them with meals three times a day as stipulated in their working agreements.
“Whatever the way it is, I must pay my younger siblings’s tuition fees,” Yantri, who wants to go back to her hometown as soon as possible, said. “I also want to go back to school because my mom has been alone now, so I must help her.”
The eldest in her family, she is now designing her future. It has been said that Pantar Tengah District will be developed as a regency. Her relatives in her hometown said that after graduating from senior high school, Yantri can be one of 150 new civil servants there.
Even if the news will be only a rumor, Yantri said that she will take benefit from her experience in working in the capital. “I will obtain a certificate from the foundation. If possible, I want to work later at the community health center there,” Yantri said.
Yantri is only one among tens of millions of children who are forced to be domestic workers, a profession that becomes the last resort for some to earn living.
This article is the final in-depth article on child domestic workers a series of four in-depth articles by Abraham Utama and Utami Diah Kusumawati of CNN Indonesia and published on 19 September 2015. The article is part of the ILO’s media fellowship programme on domestic workers and child domestic labour, jointly conducted in collaboration with the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Jakarta and eight selected leading, national mass media.
The media fellowship programme was part of the campaign conducted by the ILO through its Promoting Decent Work for Domestic Workers to End Child Domestic Work (PROMOTE) Project. Funded by the United States Department of Labour (USDOL), PROMOTE Project aims at reducing child domestic workers significantly by building institutional capacities of partners to promote Decent Work for Domestic Workers (DWDW) effectively. The Project works to increase the knowledge, skills and expertise on reducing child domestic workers and promote DWDW.
