Former Malaysia workers still stranded at home

Former Malaysia workers still stranded at home

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

More than 350,000 Indonesian workers have remained out of work
since they left Malaysia, due to an absence of job orders, a
government official has claimed.

Director-general of labor export at the Ministry of Manpower
and Transmigration I Gusti Made Arka expressed concern for the
state of former migrant workers amid Indonesia's chronic
unemployment.

"Only a few thousand of the almost 400,000 deported workers
have returned to Malaysia after they obtained necessary documents
to work there. The majority remain at home, using up the money
they brought from Malaysia just to survive," he told a joint
hearing of House of Representatives' Commissions VIII and IX on
social affairs, education and labor here on Tuesday.

Also present at the hearing were manpower minister Fahmi Idris
and State Minister for Women's Empowerment Meutia Hatta.

Malaysia's home ministry has issued some 57,000 job orders for
several labor-supplying countries, including Indonesia,
Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Myanmar and Thailand, since
the Malaysian government started raids to deport around 1.2
million illegal migrant workers earlier this month.

Arka said Malaysian employers were in urgent need of foreign
workers and that they prefer Indonesians, but their government
was slow in responding to this high demand.

He emphasized that the Indonesian government was working hard
to prevent the exploitation of illegal workers in line with the
two countries' commitments to provide legal protections for
migrant workers.

"Using the official procedure, Indonesian workers will be
protected and will be paid between 40 ringgit (US$10) and 60
ringgit per day," Arka said. By comparison, illegal workers were
paid between seven ringgit and 10 ringgit per day.

Malaysia and Indonesia recently held bilateral talks to
prepare better labor export mechanisms, but Malaysia did not
specify the number of Indonesian workers it would reemploy in the
future.

Bilateral ties have been disrupted by a border dispute in
Ambalat maritime area in the Sulawesi Sea.

Malaysia has considered recruiting workers from Pakistan if
Indonesia stops supplying workers.

House members expressed skepticism, saying that Malaysia was
in dire need of Indonesian workers because of similarities in
language, culture and religion between them.

The legislators also expressed their concern over the "rampant
abuse" of Indonesian workers overseas, saying the government
should enforce Law No. 39/2004 to help minimize labor abuse and
human trafficking.

They suggested that the government change its labor export
policy to enable the country to supply more workers in the formal
sector.

Over 76 percent, or 1.2 million, of the 1.4 million workers
supplied overseas over the past four years were women, and 70
percent of them only completed elementary education.

Minister Fahmi said attempts to curb human trafficking and the
sending of illegal and unskilled workers overseas remained far
from satisfactory due to rampant falsification of identity
documents.

He said moves should be made to eradicate corrupt practices
within the bureaucracy.