Airport company admits Terminal III is inhumane

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.