Airport company admits Terminal III is inhumane
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
For Darsiah, 58, meeting her own daughter was not easy. Arriving from Indramayu, West Java, on Monday afternoon, she had to stay overnight at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, waiting for her daughter Marni, 25, to exit from the airport's terminal III.
Marni is one of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian migrant workers working in Middle Eastern countries. She has been working in Yemen for two years.
"We can only wait outside the fence and sit on the ground," Darsiah complained. "When I first came to the airport in 2001, things were much better. I could wait for my daughter in the airport lobby."
The migrant workers must go through the airport's Terminal III upon their arrival before they can go home. The terminal was built in September 1999 to accommodate and process the homecoming workers. However, it is now where they are extorted.
Even with the airport's police attempt to curb extortion over migrant workers by, among other things, urging them to deposit their money in state-owned Bank BNI before leaving the terminal, the practices can still be found.
Relatives picking up the workers have also become targets. Those who are not familiar with terminal III or have little information on the procedure to pick up migrant workers can easily be victimized by people offering information on the flight schedule for between Rp 60,000 (US$7) and Rp 100,000.
Even for those who already know the procedure, they still have to wait for at least four hours before meeting the migrant workers. They must first report to security personnel at terminal III before the workers' names are called and are allowed to leave the airport.
"The government has lost its humanity by letting us wait under the heat in the open. I have been here for around six hours and still must wait for ... I don't know," Muslihat, a 58-year-old father from Cianjur, West Java, complained.
He went to the airport to pick up his daughter Neneng Nurhayati, 26, who has been working in Saudi Arabia for two years.
The extortion did not stop once the workers left the terminal. A migrant worker has to pay Rp 60,000, 10 times the regular price of Rp 6,000, for an ojek driver to take her to the airport shuttle bus stop, which is less than one kilometer from the terminal.
Airport operator PT Angkasa Pura spokesman Syahrial Syam admitted the conditions at terminal III were inhumane.
However, he argued that the operator would not improve the situation because the ministry of manpower and transmigration would build a terminal outside the airport for the migrant workers.