Govt, NGOs at odds over labor bill

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The government and the House of Representatives, and an alliance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are divided over the contentious bill on the protection of migrant workers, and how to minimize violence against them.

The government has emphasized the law and export procedures, while the NGOs have paid more attention to workers' protection, ranging from the recruitment process to their arrival home.

According to the NGOs alliance -- comprising Solidarity for Women (SP), Indonesian Migrant Care, the Consortium for Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (Kopbumi), the Indonesian Women's Congress (Kowani) and Women Movement for Migrant Worker Protection (GPPBM) -- the bill should stipulate that migrant workers are fully protected during their recruitment, training, departure, employment overseas and journey home.

The bill is being deliberated at the House, which expects to endorse it before the lawmakers' term ends on Sept. 30.

Spokesman for the NGOs Salma Safitri said the bill was weak as it was based on Law No. 13/2003 on labor and Ministerial Decree No. 104A/2004 on labor export.

"To make the bill stronger, it should be based on the amended 1945 Constitution, Law No. 7/1984 on the ratification of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, and Law No. 39/1999 on human rights, and carry maximum sanctions and fines," she told The Jakarta Post.

She criticized the bill, which allows the government to play a double role as regulator and exporter. Besides regulating labor export, the government has also supplied workers to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.

She said the labor-export mechanism should involve a inter- department coordinating body, labor exporters and a supervisory board, each with their own tasks.

"The coordinating body -- consisting of the relevant authorities -- would be tasked with making necessary regulations to enforce the law and issuing labor export licenses, standardizing the recruitment process, training, health care, labor contracts and salary levels, and taking harsh actions against violating exporters.

"The role of labor exporters must be clearly regulated in the bill, while the supervisory board -- comprising academics and activists -- would supervise labor export and the imposition of sanctions against violating exporters, and evaluate the performance of the coordinating body and labor exporters," she said, adding that the NGOs supported the imposition of harsh sanctions against violating exporters.

Rekso Ageng Herman, a member of the House's special committee deliberating the bill, appreciated the draft law proposed by the NGOs, but said the House could not adopt it fully as the House and the government were "racing against time" to speed up the deliberation.

"We have adopted certain points of the NGOs' draft which are considered complimentary to the House's draft," he said.

According to him, it would be better for the nation to have a (poor) legislation than nothing at all.

"If the bill's deliberation is suspended, there is no certainty that it will be deliberated in the next five years and the new legislators do not understand the bill's urgency and background," he said.

He defended the bill the House has proposed, saying that it would regulate not only migrant workers' protection but also the business of labor export, to achieve a balance.

He said that sanctions stipulated were aimed at preventing human trafficking and the employment of illegal workers, adding that most victims of extortion and violence were illegal workers.

Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea stressed the deliberation would be completed in the next two weeks and the House and the government had agreed to bring the bill to a plenary session of the House for endorsement on Sept. 21.

"The bill's deliberation will continue until its endorsement because it has long been awaited, and we need it to protect more than two million Indonesians working overseas and those who wish to work abroad," he said.