Govt denies allegation over labor exports
Govt denies allegation over labor exports
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Manpower Fahmi Idris has denied
labor export companies' allegations that the government plans to
monopolize labor exports.
"The government has insisted that there will be no monopoly in
sending workers overseas and it will end all forms of monopoly in
the labor sector," he said here on Wednesday.
The Association of Indonesian Labor Export Companies (Apjati)
criticized the establishment of the Labor Export Agency (BKPTKI)
during a hearing with House of Representatives's Commission V for
labor on Tuesday. It said the agency had been established with a
view to taking over the role which labor export companies
currently play in providing the necessary documents to workers
who are going overseas.
The association questioned what business would be left for
existing labor export companies. The new government agency was
supposed to become operational on Sept. 1 but has yet to start
work.
The new agency is intended to give a "one-stop service" to
workers who require visas, passports, insurance and bank credits
before leaving the country to work abroad. The idea surfaced
under previous ministers but came to nothing.
Fahmi said that the new agency had been established to
simplify the complicated procedures which workers currently have
to go through to get all the required documents.
"With the one-stop service, workers can get the required
documents within one or two days at a much reduced cost," he
said.
Workers usually pay around Rp 600,000 to labor export
companies for the required documents. Approximately 1 million
Indonesians are currently working abroad, with an average annual
remittance of US$3.5 billion.
Fahmi reiterated that the government would continue to boost
labor exports to ease unemployment in the country.
Extortion
Meanwhile, Anthon Sihombing, Apjati's secretary general,
called on authorities to stop extorting money from workers at
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
In the Tuesday hearing he said that last week a female worker
who wanted to go back to her home village in Sukabumi, West Java,
was charged Rp 36 million. It was not clear what the payment was
for. Anthon said that the female worker recovered the money after
reporting the case to police in the airport.
He said security personnel and employees of the immigration
office, the tax and excise directorate general and the state-
owned PT Damri bus company all extorted money from workers
entering and leaving the country.
Anthon called on the ministry to lift Damri's monopoly on
transporting Indonesian workers who return from overseas back to
their home villages in West, Central and East Java.
"Besides charging high ticket prices, money is frequently
extorted from workers on their way home," he said.
Meanwhile, Yudo Swasono, chief of the center for research and
development at the ministry, said the government was planning to
carry out two more nationwide labor-intensive projects worth Rp 3
trillion to help jobless people through the economic crisis.
He said that Rp 2 trillion would be used to finance a labor-
intensive project for unskilled job seekers while the remaining
Rp 1 trillion would be used to finance business units for skilled
job seekers.
"The manpower ministry is designing the projects and they
should get under way in the next two months," he said, adding the
projects were expected to employ around 1.5 million workers. (rms)