Finally, it seems that conf.get("mapred.map.tasks"))
DOES work after all, when I generate an executable jar file and run my program in the cluster/locally. Now the output of "map tasks" is correct.
It did not work only when running my mapreduce program locally on hadoop from the eclipse-plugin. Maybe it is an eclipse-plugin's issue.
I hope this will help someone else having the same issue. Thank you for your answers!