JAKARTA (UCAN): More than 1.5 million Indonesian workers face uncertain futures after their companies closed when the government instructed people to stay at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the Manpower Ministry, about 10 per cent have lost their jobs permanently, while the others have been laid off. Millions more face similar fates if their employers shut down.
More than 30,000 companies nationwide have been affected including hotels, factories, department stores, restaurants, cafes and travel firms. Most were forced to halt operations at the beginning of March to prevent transmission of the deadly virus.
Manpower minister, Ida Fauziyah, called on businesspeople to talk with labour unions to try and come up with acceptable solutions.
Fauziyah said that people losing their jobs should be the last resort when everything else has failed, stressing, “It’s important during this difficult time that business owners and workers build good relations.”
Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, said the government is providing funds to help workers in need. He said the government has set up programmes to help six million more workers who could be laid off by their employers, both in the informal and formal sectors.
Widodo said the government will allocate 20 trillion rupiah ($10.02 billion) to help workers in Jakarta and surrounding cities. Each family will receive about $1,968 per month.
The fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic has decimated the personal savings and incomes of most Indonesians, according to a survey released on April 17.
Conducted by Jakarta-based pollster, Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting, between late March and early April, it revealed that 77 percent of 1,200 respondents from across the country have been hit very hard.
Some 33 per cent said they could no longer meet basic needs without taking out a loan, while 20 per cent said their savings could only sustain them for a month at most. Another 20 percent said they had only enough savings to last them a week.
The survey found that 67 per cent of respondents were experiencing worsening economic conditions following the Covid-19 outbreak and 70 per cent reported a slump in income after the country’s first two Covid-19 cases were confirmed in early March.
The survey also found that low-income daily wage earners tended to be the main violators of physical distancing restrictions.
Thirty-four-year-old Maria, has worked at a luxury hotel in Jakarta for more than seven years but has not been paid this month as the hospitality sector has been one of the worst hit by the coronavirus.
She worries about losing her job if the pandemic does not let up soon. She said she would try to get government help. “I will really need that money,” she said.
Maulana Yusran, deputy chairperson of the Association of Indonesian Hotels and Restaurants, acknowledged the layoffs saying, “If we don’t do this, we will not survive. Hotel operations are dependent on cash flow.”
The Archdiocese of Jakarta said it is helping those who were laid off.
“Since March we have been delivering food packages to them,” said Jesuit Father Christopher Kristiono Puspo, director of archdiocese’s social arm, the Daya Dharma Institute (LDD). He added that the institute would help them until the coronavirus crisis ends.
As of April 22, Indonesia had recorded 7,135 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 616 deaths.
