INDONESIA: Would-be Migrants Chafe against Ban on Unskilled Labour

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Richel Dursin

JAKARTA, Mar 17 2003 (IPS) - ”I don’t know when we will leave,” teary-eyed Indonesian worker Siti Aisah said. ”The longer we stay here, the more we will incur debts,” Tri Widjayanti, Aisah’s friend, added.

Aisah and Widjayanti are just two among thousands of Indonesians who are waiting at cramped temporary shelters in uncertainty, hoping that they can soon leave and take up jobs as domestic workers overseas.

They are fretting because they have been unable to leave Indonesia due to a February circular issued by the manpower and transmigration ministry, which bans labour export companies from sending workers to Middle East countries.

This is due to the escalating tension in Iraq – but also another decree it issued on Feb. 10, which suspends the export of migrant workers, especially women, to take up unskilled jobs like domestic work, in order to curb physical and sexual abuses and other problems.

But meantime, the country’s recruitment agencies, most of them money-oriented, continue to lure workers.

”The regulations by the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry are not a problem. ”It’s business as usual for us,” said Agus Priyono, operational manager of PT Assami Ananda Mandiri, the agency that recruited Aisah and Widjayanti. Opposition to the measures from the labour-sending agencies has also led to reports that the government is planning to reverse the ban on labour experts, reflecting a debate that often crops up in labour-sending countries about the wisdom and effectivity of bans on women taking up unskilled work overseas.

In an interview, Heriawan Saleh, head of research, development and information agency at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, says that the ministry is indeed considering lifting the ban.

But the ministry is studying when to do this, he said. ”I don’t think it would be lifted this month because it was just issued in February and the ban is necessary to improve workers’ skills,” Saleh said.

Clearly, the events so far show that Indonesia is finding it tough to balance its two concerns – efforts to protect it workers overseas and its reliance on the earnings these workers send home to Indonesia.

”Many Indonesians want to work abroad because of the limited employment opportunities in the country,” said Carla June Natan, coordinator of the Centre for Indonesian Migrant Workers here.

There are now at least 42 million unemployed Indonesians in this country of 220 million, some of them university graduates. Joblessness makes Indonesia rank among the Asian countries that are major exporters of human labour, together with the Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India.

Every year, the government earns around billion U.S. dollars from exporting labour.

The government estimates that there are three million documented Indonesian migrant workers and about seven million undocumented ones in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific countries.

Saudi Arabia has the biggest number of Indonesian workers, followed by neighbouring Malaysia. Indonesian women workers land in Saudi Arabia using the pretext of a pilgrimage, and some are trafficked for prostitution by going as domestic helpers, shop attendants or waitresses, activists say.

But getting a handle on migration for work overseas – as well enforcing a ban on women working abroad in unskilled jobs – is by no means easy.

Arguing that the central government no longer has authority over them after the implementation of regional autonomy in January last year, Indonesian provinces have been sending workers abroad.

The Migrant Workers Task Force at the National Commission on Violence against Women points out that East Java province has been sending domestic workers and babysitters to Hong Kong despite the February suspension.

Many undocumented Indonesian workers, usually from Java and West Nusa Tenggara provinces, are sent to Malaysia and Singapore through Batam and Dumai in Sumatra or East Kalimantan. In Malaysia, many Indonesian women workers end up in brothels. Tawao in Malaysia is known as an area where hundreds of Indonesian women have been in the sex trade for years.

”Suspending the export of informal migrant workers only increases the number of undocumented Indonesian migrant workers, making it more difficult to provide legal protection to them,” said Wahyu Susilo, executive secretary of the Consortium for Indonesian Migrant Workers Advocacy (Kopbumi), composed of 70 activist groups. ”But even if they are documented, the government does not provide enough legal protection to them,” Susilo said.

”The suspension only creates more problems for us,” agreed Aisah, 19, who has been waiting at PT. Assami Ananda Mandiri’s packed ‘camp’ for months now.

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Jacob Nuwa Wea said that reports of abuses are compounded by the fact that Indonesian workers were both unskilled and unable to master languages in the countries they work in.

Wea said most labour export firms do not provide enough jobs and language training before the workers leave Indonesia.

Instead, the recruitment agencies give lectures on values, advise workers to respect their employers and the culture of receiving countries and not to create any trouble that would put Indonesia in bad light. They hardly give lectures on migrant workers’ rights.

Wea added that the country’s informal migrant workers – domestic workers, babysitters and caregivers – were often ”psychologically immature” and lacked knowledge of cultures and conditions in their host countries.

These limitations, he said, greatly contributed to the high number of fatal accidents involving Indonesian migrant workers.

Data from the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry showed that at least 75 Indonesian maids had fallen to death from their employers’ high-rise apartments in Singapore since 1999. In West Nusa Tenggara, ex-migrant workers have become insane after working in Malaysia, Kopbumi activists say.

While labour exports are suspended, recruitment agencies are required to provide job and language training and religious teachings to migrant workers. But the Association of Indonesian Labour Export Companies says that the law does not oblige its members to provide training for migrant workers – and merely allows them to send these workers abroad.

”The government’s effort to solve the problems of migrant workers is just a drop in the ocean;” said Tati Krisnawaty, a commissioner at the National Commission on Violence against Women.

The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry says 80 percent of Indonesian workers’ problems such as falsification of documents and identity, extortion, and lack of skills take place before leaving the country.