Govt tasks Bachtiar with settling migrant workers issue

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.