SOCIAL LIFE

According to the majority of tribe in every village, each village has its’ own social life. Generally, there are 2 types of social order on the area; the village with majority Javanese tribe people has majority Moslem people, Javanese relative system and the village with majority Bataknese tribe people has majority Christian people, Bataknese relative system.

The social interaction between ethnics only happens while working on the plantation, and it is very limited. The Javanese ethnic is more dependent on the plantation due to their ancestors’ historical presence as a plantation laborer.

Differ from the Bataknese ethnic, before the private plantation exist, they have already come here as a farmer. This thing makes them not very dependent to the plantation.  

PORTRAIT OF A POOR CONDITION

The obvious equality of  these two ethnics is they are both poor, they lives in a flood-welcome village, the bad condition of water quality, and they both economically unlucky.

This condition is being worse by the minimum public facility like school, health facility and clean water facility which actually is the local government’s responsibility. Meanwhile, aside from the poor village, there is an organized, prosperous condition on the plantation company.

As the problems accumulate, social disease float to the surface, emerge as if it is something natural or something that can not be changed.

Early marriages of the low educational level teenager has a straight effect on the quality of the next generation. The low quality of health of the children can be seen from the low level of grow and the high level of children mortality. This is caused by the low level of the mother’s knowledge on dealing with babies and the minimum and the expensiveness of health facility.  

BHL, A SLAVERY

Since 1970s, the cycle of rough-workers –BHL—happened for the plantation. The first grand-children generation of the coming ancestor had still became daily laborer, without any capability –by oneself or collectively--to reach to a better position on the plantation. As the consequences, they keep dependent to the plantation and they keep the poor condition.

The arogance of the plantation seems to be something natural, something that is no need to be bothered. The feudalism on the plantation turns out to be something which is still powerful to keep the laborer –BHL—quiet, and not demanding their rights. Collective anxiety becomes natural because the lower position of the laborer means power to the plantation company. No rules. No law. The plantation company is the law-makers. And it happens with the backup from the state apparatus who gained something from the plantation company.

If the company  fired their daily laborer, it can not be described as Pemutusan Hubungan Kerja or PHK (severance of work relations), because the relations between them is slavery; the plantation company as the master – the owner of the full authority, of the live of the laborer and the laborer family.

In some cases found, daily laborer which dominated by women, also be the target of the sexual harassment from the plantation watchers. Even when the laborer’s family knew about this, they still do not do anything.

They think very rational even though very un-respectful to women’s rights; that it is better to keep silent and go on working instead of doing a protest and end-up losing the job.

From a participative study held by LSPL, almost every women who work as pesticide syringe, complains poisonous symptoms i.e. watery eyes, cough, itchy, headache, vomit/throw up and some of them even died.

On February 2001, a pesticide syringe laborer called Suparni (age 17) died, estimated by pesticide poisoning. It was hard to reveal the cause of her death due to the family’s big anxiety to run an autopsy to her body. So her family accept her death as a faith only.

From the health vision, this whole tragedy related to the need of protection such as mask, shoes, special clothes, and gloves.

Almost all of the daily syringe laborer is not equipped with the tools needed. They don’t even have any awareness of the danger of pesticide, so it will be no surprises if this kind of case keep happening or even increase in the future.

DAILY LABORER, MAY NOT ALWAYS BE THE LOSER

In the complexity of the situation, it is very hard to find a solution. To invite the –always lose- community needs some serious and related effort.

Non formal educational approach and organization becomes the basic thing to make the community involved and participate in gaining their winning.

The first step is how to devaluate their collective anxiety through some effort to defense and restore their rights as a human being who really appreciate their life. They need friends to help them, for sure.

Start from a real action for a change in the system of plantation, simplicity, humanity and fairness.

To develop collective critical awareness, in the relation of solidarity to show that the chain of pauperization on the plantation can be stopped by doing a deconstruction of the feudalism system without force.

BHL, get together..!

Acknowledgement;

The article was written by Poltak Simanjuntak

Bahasa Indonesia

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