Expulsion of workers from KL studied

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.