Better services for migrant workers

Better services for migrant workers

By Novan Iman Santosa

CILACAP, Central Java (JP): Minister of Manpower Fahmi Idris
has promised the government's utmost to protect migrant workers
from mistreatment and to better serve them upon their arrival
home.

Among the most immediate programs the government has launched
was the opening of a separate embarkation and debarkation
terminal at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport where the
migrant workers would not only be better served, but also
protected from extortionists as has been the case for years.

"President B.J. Habibie has agreed to operate Terminal Three
of the airport as a point of departure and arrival of workers,"
Fahmi said in a dialog with about 400 former and prospective
migrant workers here on Saturday. The minister was accompanied by
Din Syamsuddin, Director General of Manpower Placement and
Development, and Soewardi, Director of Migrant Manpower Services.

The new terminal would be opened on Aug. 31. There are
currently two terminals at the airport, one for domestic flights
and another for international ones.

"The new terminal is intended to provide better protection for
the home-coming migrant workers from extortion and other unfair
treatment," Fahmi said.

He promised similar facilities would be provided for the
workers at the Adi Sumarmo Airport in Central Java town of
Surakarta and the Juanda Airport in Surabaya. He did not say when
the two airports would operate the facilities.

Airport checkpoints were cited as a place where home-coming
migrant workers were very often subjected to poor treatment from
officials and other people, including extortion and robbery of
their possession, mainly their hard-earned money.

A former migrant worker, Siti Nafsiah, told the dialog with
Fahmi that a police officer at the Ahmad Yani Airport in Semarang
took her check of Rp 45 million which she earned after working
for seven years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

"It was a policeman who took my check," she said incredulously
when Fahmi asked why she had not reported it to the police.

Nafsiah said she also sent checks twice to her husband in
Indonesia but they never reached him. "This (financial) loss
caused quarrels between my husband and I," she said.

Fahmi told the audience, especially the future workers, to
take a lesson from Siti's experience. He urged them to use
banking services.

Not all of the workers, however, had sad stories. Aryani, who
worked for four and a half years in Taiwan, flashed about ten
gold bracelets circling her wrist and spoke of how she now had
several paddy fields.

"Now that I have a lot of money, I don't want to work in the
fields any more," she said to Fahmi. Aryani's husband is also a
migrant worker now working in Malaysia.

Another success story was told by Yusuf who worked in Saudi
Arabia for two years with his wife. "Most of the money that we
made went to our children's education," he said, adding with
pride that his eldest son is now studying at the highly respected
Al Azhar University in Cairo.

Fahmi said the government would do its best to enable more
migrant workers achieve similar success. "The government can't
provide enough jobs here, so it is better to be a migrant worker
with a better salary," he said.

Officials said last year an estimated 613,000 Indonesians are
currently working overseas; observers, however, believed the
actual number is much higher as many Indonesians work illegally
in some neighboring countries.

Reports of abuse and manipulation of the mostly poorly-
educated women workers abounded, however.

Din Syamsuddin said the government would provide a credit
scheme to enable the workers to pay fees to recruitment agencies
in the countries where they worked. The labor export companies
here would act as guarantors to the scheme.

"The scheme is important because some countries are asking for
a large fee to pay agencies there," Din said.

Hong Kong asked for a fee of Rp 17,845,000 (US$ 2,444), Taiwan
asked Rp 24,850,000, and Malaysia would soon raise its fee of Rp
1,685,000. "Those amounts are only for Indonesians who work as
domestic helpers. Other positions would require different fees,"
Din said.

Fahmi said his office was planning an international "road
show" to expand the market for Indonesian workers. Unlike
previous missions which involved only the government, this time
around the Indonesian Association of Labor Export Companies
(Apjati) would also be involved, he said.

"The Netherlands and the United States need a lot of nurses,
but we can't yet meet the demand," Fahmi said.

Roeswidi, the Cilacap regency secretary, said the region sent
9,665 migrant workers in the 1998/99 fiscal year. "The workers
have sent home Rp 69 billion (US$ 9.45 million), larger than
Cilacap annual budget," said Roeswidi admitting that the success
was also followed by several problems.

"The rate of divorce among migrant worker families has
increased," Roeswidi said without providing exact numbers. There
were also cases of brokers falsifying papers in their sending of
workers, he said.

Sri Soebagyo, an assistant to the governor in Banyumas region,
described the impact of the economic crisis in the province.
"There are 2.5 million jobless people, which constitutes 16
percent of the work force in the province," he said.