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.