Govt to suspend labor supply to Mideast

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government will temporarily suspend the sending of workers to Middle Eastern countries in March in order to remedy poor coordination and preparation, says an official.

Director General for Labor Export at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration I Gusti Made Arke said here recently that the government made the decision amid a disorganized system that caused many workers to suffer various troubles in their workplace overseas.

"During the month-long suspension, the government will fix the recruitment system, training program and the sending process to give certainty to both workers and their employers overseas. The government is determined to ensure that labor exporters send only workers who have the necessary documents, are well-trained for their assigned job, can speak Arabic and are insured under a commercial insurance scheme," he said.

Many Indonesian workers have encountered problems while working in the Middle East for various reasons, including using false identity cards, not having the necessary skills, and being unable to speak Arabic.

The last case involved two women workers who were abducted by an Iraqi militant group when they were on their way from Jordan to the war-torn country. Indonesia has barred workers from traveling to Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of the country a year ago.

Arke said further that the government had delivered diplomatic notes to the Embassies of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates in Jakarta to inform them of the government's new decision.

Indonesia supplies between 15,000 and 20,000 workers per month to the Middle East, who are mostly employed as domestic helpers in Saudi Arabia.

Labor recruitment and export agencies have voiced their support for the government's decision in the hope that the labor export procedure in April would be much better than the present one.

"The minister of manpower and transmigration should show strong commitment to remedying the poor export mechanism by taking harsh actions against subordinates who abuse their power and against labor exporters who violate Law No. 39/2004 on labor export," Secretary General of the Indonesian Employee Agency Association (Idea) Djamal Aziz said.

Djamal also said the government should give a fair quota to all labor exporters in accordance with their capacity to avoid oversupply and maintain Indonesian workers' bargaining power.

"Indonesian workers' bargaining power has dropped to the lowest level due to oversupply and the sending of unskilled workers," he said, citing that the monthly salary of Indonesian workers in Saudi Arabia had dropped to an average of 600 real (Rp 1.2 million) from between 800 and 1,000 real in the 1990s because of oversupply.