Bureaucratic reasons delay 60,000 workers passage to S. Arabia
Bureaucratic reasons delay 60,000 workers passage to S. Arabia
JAKARTA (JP): The sending of 60,000 workers to Saudi Arabia is
being delayed because of obstacles raised by new administrative
requirements, managements of labor export firms have said.
Representatives of eight companies, which have accommodated
the workers in their dormitories in Greater Jakarta and Surabaya,
East Java, complained on Saturday that the workers could not be
sent because their labor contracts had yet to be signed.
The reason lies in the different procedures required by the
governments of Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The workers should
have left on Nov. 6, they said, adding that the government was
not being "cooperative" despite its complaints of increasing
unemployment.
Abdullah Umar, president of PT Alvreda, said the workers could
not be sent because of the new ruling on labor contracts recently
issued by the Manpower Ministry here.
"The new ruling requires Saudi Arabian employers to sign labor
contracts with their Indonesian workers in the presence of
Indonesian government representatives in Riyadh or Jeddah, to
ensure more protection for Indonesians employed in that country,"
Abdullah said.
He said the requirement was rejected by Saudi Arabian
employers given the distance between their residences and the two
cities which could be more than 2,000 kilometers.
"The employers want labor contracts to be signed only with
workers," he said, adding that the employers actually had no
objection to signing labor contracts with Indonesian workers in
the presence of employment agencies in the two countries.
Many abuses have been reported by Indonesian workers.
Of about one million Indonesian workers employed overseas, as of
July there were 600,000 working in Saudi Arabia, mostly as female
domestic servants.
Husein Alaydrus, president of PT Almina Indah, hailed the
government's new ruling to improve protection for Indonesian
migrant workers there, but said it was "not practical" because it
required Saudi Arabian employers to go to the Indonesian Embassy
in Riyadh, or meet with the Indonesian Consul General in Jeddah
to sign labor contracts before the documents were then sent to
Indonesia to be signed by their prospective employees.
"We urge the government to review the ruling to revive
stagnant labor exports," he said. There was no need for such a
requirement as the embassy could simply monitor labor protection
through copies of the contracts, which name the labor export
company and insurance firm involved.
Achmad Kamali, president of PT Duta Ananda Setia, said that
his company would suffer large losses if workers who had been
recruited, trained and accommodated for months in its dormitory
failed to leave for Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, in a separate occasion on Saturday, the Association
of Indonesian Labor Export Companies (Apjati) signed a memorandum
of understanding (MOU) with the Federation of All Indonesian
Workers Union (FSPSI) and the Association on Indonesian Employers
(Apindo) to help workers displaced because of the crisis.
Abdullah, also Apjati chairman, said that with the agreement a
joint team has been set up to establish a database on dismissed
workers and their skills and to design a training program for
those who were prepared to be employed overseas.
"The database is much needed... because we will face tight
competition from other labor-exporting countries, such as the
Philippines, China and Bangladesh," he said. (rms)