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)