Any child who is determined to leave the jermal before the obligatory three months can expect not a rupiah.Once the child reaches the jermal he can be effectively held prisoner. It is common to meet children who have worked from 12 to 18 months on jermals without a break or leave of any kind. Furthermore, most of the children seem unaware that deductions for food and other essentials will be made, reducing this pittance by as much as two-thirds. Written contracts of employment do not exist, but the majority of jermal owners insist on a minimum three- to four-month tenure. They cling to the hope that the jermal owner will ensure they are rewarded for their hard work. Benny, 13, has been here continuously for 18 months and Parlin for almost as long without a break. Young Wahyudi, curly haired and clad in filthy trousers and a grey singlet, doesn’t know his age His mother never told him when he was born.

He looks about 13 years of age and confides that he ates working on the jermal “The boys all want to go home,” he says. “They’re all unhappy, bored and afraid.” Rain is beginning to rattle on the roof.The children are lured to the jermals from poverty-stricken peasant families and inland villages by agents offering vague promises of good wages for hard work. The preference for child labour is not surprising: children are compliant, easily intimidated and unworldly enough to be grateful to slave for wages as low as IR50,000, around pounds 2 per month.Many of the children seem to have no idea how much, or even when, they might be paid. He’s worked on this jermal for three years with just five months on dry land. Sunar, a 14-year-old, complains that the foreman kicks and slaps him if he’s slow or makes a mistake.

“They would have killed us all if it had been necessary.”As he rests his head on the boards, 14-year-old Sugiwan clutches the few faded photos he saved of his father who died in the year he was born. A few months ago this jermal was raided by thieves armed with sticks and panga knives, a not irregular occurrence They stole fish, fuel, money and what little the boys owned “Yes, they were very bad men,” says Parlin. They have almost no personal possessions and anyway there would be nowhere to put them. A basic Citizens’ Band radio is the only link with the outside world. There isn’t even a boat.At night the children of Sinchiacuan secrete themselves on improvised shelters in the roof, sleeping as best they can on sheets of brown paper.

There are also accounts of physical, verbal and sexual abuse but the children have nowhere to run. Typically this extends to iodine tincture for cuts, battery acid for stings and a poultice soaked in diesel for stomach ache. Fatigue-related injuries, illnesses such as malaria, blood pressure problems due to high sodium intake, together with vitamin deficiency, respiratory and skin complaints caused by continual exposure to damp, salt water and jelly-fish stings, are commonplace.First aid is basic and often woefully inadequate. Vegetables, which only last about two days in this climate, may come once a month together with fresh water, often of dubious origin and quality. The jermals have no emergency or life-saving equipment, no toilets or sanitation, and there are no beds for the children – that’s a luxury reserved for the foreman, often the only adult on board these lonely outposts Meals are almost exclusively boiled rice or salted fish.

Some foremen pour boiling water on children who inadvertently doze at their post or fail to wake promptly when summoned. Storms are but one of many hazards for these jermal children. Worse than almost anything else is the misery caused by lack of sleep. The backbone of the jermal is intentionally jointed, articulating like the vertebrae of some marine monster – a rigid structure would be smashed to pieces in days. Then the hazardous and laborious task begins, sorting teri, squid, shrimps, eels, crabs and larger fish from the noxious and the downright nasty.