Expulsion of workers from KL studied
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A coalition of non-governmental organizations are now conducting an investigation into the "real" reasons for Malaysia's decision to deport hundreds of thousands of Indonesian male migrant workers.
The members of the Consortium for Indonesian Migrant Workers Advocacy (Kopbumi) have been deployed to seaports in Belawan in North Sumatra, Lumajang and Lamongan in East Java, Parepare in South Sulawesi and Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara to collect accounts from migrant workers on what had happened before their deportation.
Kopbumi executive secretary Wahyu Susilo revealed on Thursday that from their latest visit to Sabah state in Malaysia last October, there were several raids on migrant workers and immigrants from the Middle East and African countries under an operation code named Gagak Hitam (Black Crow).
"Extortion which also involved the police was rampant there," Wahyu told a media conference held at the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute Foundation (YLBHI)'s office here.
Malaysia exercised the tough measure following a number of riots and other suspected crimes involving Indonesian workers last month.
Another Kopbumi activist, Edi Purwanto, said the arguments used to justify the deportation of Indonesian workers were unacceptable because Malaysia is actually in need of a huge number of workers to run its industries and plantations.
"Unregistered Indonesian workers, whose number has reached 1.5 million, are the lowest-paid workers they can employ," he said, adding that there are around 2 million Indonesian workers in Malaysia, with only 500,000 registered.
Wahyu explained that the unregistered workers were mostly Bugis and Madura people, who went to live with relatives who had been their for generations, those who were deceived by unscrupulous agents and those who did not have permanent jobs.
"In several cases, the illegal workers were invited by the companies in Malaysia themselves. It was clearly shown by the high influx of the unregistered workers around harvest time or around the period of construction of big projects such as Sepang Race Circuit and airport and the Petronas Twin Towers," he said.
Kopbumi called on the government to take efforts to establish a bilateral agreement to protect the migrant workers during the upcoming meeting of the Joint Committee for Indonesia-Malaysia slated to take place on Feb. 18 in Kuala Lumpur.
"We also call on the Malaysian government to revoke its discriminative policy against the Indonesian migrant workers," Wahyu said.