Govt tasks Bachtiar with settling migrant workers issue

Moch. N. Kurniawan and Onny Setiawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Samarinda

In a desperate move to help hundreds of thousands illegal Indonesian workers returning from Malaysia, the government has assigned Minister of Social Affairs Bachtiar Chamsyah to take comprehensive action.

Bachtiar said the government would focus on feeding, accommodating and transporting the workers back home, tasks which were in fact already being carried but with a lack of proper coordination.

"I hope the government will have completed the action in one week," he said.

Bachtiar said officials from his ministry, the Navy, the Immigration Office, and the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration would meet on Friday to deal with the problem of the returning workers.

He expected there would be no problem in transporting them, and the Immigration office would soon process the applications of workers who wished to work in Malaysia again.

The move, however, seems somewhat overdue, ironic given that Indonesia's migrant workers, including the illegal ones, have been contributing billions of dollars to the country for years.

Some provincial administrations had even reportedly rejected the arrival of the returnees, although they later changed their stances.

Separately, Hary Hariawan Saleh, director general of population mobilization at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, said the government had allocated Rp 7.6 billion (US$840,000) to help the workers until the end of August.

Former minister of manpower Bomer Pasaribu criticized the government's sluggish response to the workers' forced return, which had been predicted since last year following riots staged by Indonesian workers.

He also warned that the returning workers would create big problems at home as there were no jobs here for them.

Even without the returning workers, Indonesia was faced with more than 40 million unemployed, millions of refugees and the arduous task of recovering from the 1997 economic crisis.

Illegal Indonesian workers in Malaysia are rushing to return home ahead of the implementation by Malaysia of its new Immigration Act, which threatens illegal workers with canning.

The Act was supposed to take effect on Thursday, but the Malaysian government decided to delay the repatriation of the illegal immigrants for one month at the request of the Indonesian government.

In the latest development, AFP reported that Malaysian police arrested on Thursday 135 illegal immigrants -- including Indonesians -- who were seeking asylum outside the UN refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur.

Also on Thursday, the Malaysian Police began cracking down on Indonesian immigrants living illegally in Kinabalu and Tawau, East Malaysia.

Makdum Taher, Indonesian consul general in Tawau, reported that Malaysian police were raiding passenger buses heading to Tawau and arresting illegal workers on the orders of Sabah Chief Minister Chong K.

"Malaysian police arrested workers who did not have the required immigration documents to stay and work in Sabah, because they considered the new Immigration law was effective as of Aug. 1, 2002," Nunukan Seaport Administrator Simanjuntak quoted Makdum as saying.

He said the arrests occurred in Talukit and Kinabalu on Thursday. The police were apparently ignorant of the Malaysian government's decision to extend the amnesty period until Aug. 30, 2002 for those who could prove they were in the process of leaving the country.

Malaysian officials said 318,000 illegal immigrants left the country under the amnesty. More than 80 percent were Indonesians.