Dr. Ike Farida gave presentation in 5th JILPT Tokyo Comparative Labor Policy Seminar 2022

Dr. Ike Farida, S.H., LL.M. represented Indonesia in an annual international seminar event of the 5th Japan Institue for Labor Policy and Training (JILPT) Tokyo Comparative Labor Policy (09/03). The event was held online, similar to the 4th JILPT back in 2020. This year, JILPT raised the topic of "The Impact of COVID-19 on Labor Market and Policy Responses: Strengthening Social Protection for Vulnerable Workers".

Dr. Ike Farida stated that Indonesia is highly populated, reaching around 273 million in 2021 where 51,3% of the populace are the workforce of the country, or around 140 million people at most. From this high number of workforce, more than 200 thousand workers were infected by COVID-19. This caused the workers being incapable of doing their jobs and the productivity of companies fell, costing a lot for the companies profit as time goes on. The most glaring result is that companies could not pay the wages of their employees or are forced to reduce the working hours, whereas in 2021 there are 17 million workers that are forced to work with reduced working hours. On the other hand, companies also faced the mandates from the government; non-essential business are to be closed down.

Dr. Ike Farida then recommends the need to socialize the issues of the labor assurance program to implement it optimally. The optimalization relates to the need of companies to adapt of doing their business online. Unfortunately, there are still no implemented regulations encompassing E-Commerce industry and online services in Indonesia.