Dozens of children are suspected of being victims of their parents' exploitation because they have been employed as cleaners at the fish landing port (Jembatan Puri) in Sorong City, West Papua.


Even more concerning, these children are employed without being equipped with adequate personal safety equipment such as uniforms, shoes, gloves, helmets, and masks.


Every day, the children, who are still in school from elementary school to junior high school, are tasked with cleaning up garbage, both organic and non-organic from the traders' stalls.


They do the work in groups after school, starting at 12 noon East Indonesia time until it's finished. One working group consists of about 10 children.


According to them, the job of cleaning up the garbage was done at the request of parents to help the family's economy. The wages received are also uncertain because it depends on the amount of payment for each stall to the worker coordinator.


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1. Aris Saimar (Junior high school student/Cleaner)
2. Helena Saimar (Elementary school student/Cleaner)


The worker coordinator, Magdalena Waromi, did not deny that she involved children as cleaners. The children are usually their own close relatives.


The work the children do is also not through the government, but on their own initiative. According to Magdalena's confession, her parents had done the job of cleaning up trash in the fish landing port area based on an agreement with the traders.


Magdalena was once involved in cleaning up trash in the area. After married. Magdalena also involved her husband as a worker. The work of Magdalena and her husband and their colleagues who received wages from traders was stopped by the government because they were considered illegal levies.

Since the government did not provide cleaning staff, Magdalena and her husband were then asked by traders to clean their stalls.

After her husband died, Magdalena then recruited several workers. However, due to uncertain wages, the workers then no longer carry out their duties.

The average income that used to be 10 million, has now dropped drastically to around 2 million rupiah every month, to be distributed equally among all workers.

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3. Magdalena Waromi (cleaning coordinator)


The fish landing port (puri bridge) is one of the economic veins of Sorong City, because it is the largest fish market in the province of West Papua. In this place, thousands of tons of fish brought by fishermen after fishing, are bought directly by the community, retail traders and wholesalers.

Retailers generally buy fish for sale by traveling around the Sorong area. Meanwhile, wholesalers buy fish to be sent inland to outside the region.