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.