Govt chided over labor protection

JAKARTA: Labor activists slammed the government on Saturday for dragging its feet in establishing labor protection offices overseas to help Indonesian workers there.

"Indonesian workers overseas are facing increasingly complicated problems. We support calls to open more labor offices overseas," Yunus Yamani, executive director of the Indonesian Overseas Worker Law Protection Agency (BPHTKLN), said on Saturday.

He cited, for example, the cases of 364 Indonesian workers in Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The workers, he said, were in dire need of assistance to cope with problems they were facing. He did not disclose the problems faced by workers there.

Minister for Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea had reportedly urged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to open eight more labor offices overseas, but the ministry had only opened two -- one in Kuala Lumpur and the other in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. -- Antara