The ECLT Foundation commissioned the International Labour Organisation and its Programme on the Elimination of Child labour (ILO/IPEC) to research on the extent of child labour used in tobacco-growing in Sumatra, Indonesia.

This research aimed to obtain a picture of the situation and condition of child workers and their families in tobacco plantations. The survey involved interviewing 100 child workers and their families in several state-owned plantations in Deli Serdang district, North Sumatra province, Indonesia.

The responses to the interviews indicate that children work to help their parents in the plantation and have no official employment with the plantation. As a result, these children are not entitled to wages directly or benefits from the plantation. While all full-time workers are adults, a few children reportedly have been hired as part-time workers. Child workers helping to meet their father's contract targets are not even considered daily part-time workers.

According to the interviews and discussions with other informants, parents encourage children’s involvement in tobacco cultivation; very few children were found to have offered themselves for work. Tobacco fields are divided into small plots, each of which is allocated to a contracted worker, typically a man who has a family. The number of plants, the limited time for each stage of the cultivation and restrictions on how many leaves can be picked from each plant at harvesting time makes the tasks overwhelming for one person.

The majority of children interviewed stated that they worked to help their parents and even saw it as an obligation. The respondents in this study aged 5–18 years old, and most of them are still in school. The others had dropped out and nearly half of them said they left because the parents could not afford the costs. Many of the child respondents said they started working in the tobacco field at an early age.

To keep children from working in the tobacco plantation, their family’s economic situation needs to be improved. The researchers for this study recommend the following:

1. reform the work system to be fairer and more appropriate to the workers’ capacity
2. promote income-generating activities for families to pursue
3. promote the importance of education among parents and local authorities, particularly those responsible for education budgets and to improve children’s access to education.

Advocacy efforts can emphasise that children are indeed economic assets whose worth and income-earning potential can only be realized with a complete education.

Please click here for the entire study (PDF 407Kb).

Geneva, 24 October 2005