The Director General of Social Rehabilitation Ensures the Ministry of Social Affairs' Commitment to Protect Children

JAKARTA (31 May 2020) - Director General of Social Rehabilitation, Harry Hikmat was present as a speaker in the 2020 World No Tobacco Day commemoration webinar. This webinar was jointly organized by the Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection (KPPA), the Ministry of Social Affairs, The Union Indonesia, and the Indonesian Child Protection Agency (LPAI).

Harry expressed his concern about the current condition of child smokers. "90% of smokers start at the age of 19 years. On average, they start using cigarettes before graduating from high school. Even adolescent smokers aged 13-15 started smoking at the age of 12," said Harry, citing the 2014 Global Youth Tobacco Survey.

Furthermore, Harry explained that 43% of the 90 million passive smokers in Indonesia are children under 15. "We are not only overshadowed by children who are active smokers, but also passive smokers. This is because children are in public spaces where many adults smoke around them. Therefore, we need to design public spaces where the smokers are out of reach of children," added Harry.

Harry gave an example of how Singapore is committed to protecting passive smoking by designing smoking huts in public spaces. "In Singapore's Orchad Road there are 40 smoking areas with a distance of 100-200 meters. That was the data before 2019. We can take a note on how the Singapore Government handled this problem," said Harry.

Regarding the role of the Ministry of Social Affairs in protecting children from smoking, Harry said that the Ministry of Social Affairs will review the social assistance acceptance system such as PKH (Family Hope Program) and other Social Assistance Programs so that they are not used for smoking.

"Apart from that, we are also ready to carry out case responses and even follow up on case management to complete handling of smoking cases in children," Harry continued.

Apart from the Director General for Social Rehabilitation, this webinar also presented the Chairperson of LPAI Seto Mulyadi and The Union Indonesia Fauzi Muhammad Noor as speakers. Present as Key Note Speaker, Minister of Women Empowerment and Child Protection I Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmawati.