How to protect migrant workers

How to protect migrant workers

By Santo Koesoebjono

WASSENAAR, Netherlands (JP): The need for skilled workers in
Western European countries is regularly voiced in the media
there. Decreasing birth rates, declining interest in certain
skilled jobs and continued economic expansion since the mid-1990s
are the main causes for the increased demand.

Similar demand is also rising in the United States and in
Eastern Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and
Japan.

Companies and organizations in the private and public sectors
are assiduously searching for manpower across borders. Germany
recently decided to recruit some 30,000 specialists in
information technology from countries outside the European Union.
Tenfold this number is needed up to the year 2003. A survey
carried out by the European Chamber of Commerce showed that 11
percent of interviewed enterprises were looking for new personnel
this year.

People in developing countries, lacking job opportunities and
receiving low wages at home, become the target in this search.
Indonesia is not exempt. Numerous bona fide as well as obscure
agents see a chance to take part in this business and jump in to
match employers and job seekers.

The demand and flow of all types of workers, from servants,
prostitutes to more skilled workers or professionals -- nurses,
medical specialists and technicians -- keep growing.

Therefore it is urgent that the Indonesian government
reinforce measures and regulations to control recruitment and
mediation to prevent abuses and a brain drain, and to guarantee
the improvement of workers' skills and knowledge as an investment
in human resources.

Three parties play a key role in this business of bridging the
international gap in demand and supply. The first and most
important party is the prospective workers, the main actors in
international labor migration.

In this process, manpower intermediary agents, or the second
party, will emerge and governments, the third party, will lose a
part of their human resources but will gain foreign currency. A
win-win situation for all parties concerned should be aimed for.

Lack of power and opportunity to break out of the cycle of
poverty and the desire to earn more has stimulated many to take
the chance offered by agents to work abroad.

Stories about higher income and better working and living
conditions abroad have tempted many to try their luck in a
foreign country. They hope to save money to realize their dreams
of helping family members, sending their children to school,
building a house or starting a business back home. Success
stories about and from returning workers have concealed the true
reality of this business and prevent other interested workers
from seeing the risks involved.

The first risk is the intermediary. Most prospective workers
do not know whether they are dealing with bona fide or shady
agents. These workers are dependent on their agents in obtaining
information about living and working conditions, cultural
differences and practical knowledge of the language.

The agents are obliged to prepare the workers to live and be
able to work in a new environment totally foreign to them. Unlike
children of the elite, these workers are not accompanied by their
mothers to their countries of destination!

The agents provide services both to job seekers and employers.
In a free market economy anybody can set up this kind of
business. This intermediary agent may be an individual operating
alone or a group of individuals who operate under a certain legal
construct such as a foundation. The agent recruits the workers
and has the responsibility to give prospective workers basic
information and preparation before departure, and to send them to
their destinations.

Two types of intermediaries can be noted. The first type takes
a scrupulous and ethical approach at all stages of preparation,
prior to recruitment to the return of the workers after
completing their contracts.

Usually they operate in a professional manner: they are honest
in informing potential employers about the quality of the
prospective workers, and they inform the workers about their
rights and obligations in the host country. They also know the
requirements of the institutions or companies seeking workers. A
bona fide agency follows up and evaluates their activities in
cooperation with the institutions and companies employing the
foreign workers.

The agency also listens to workers' experiences and supports
them when problems arise. The ethical approach and transparent
systematic working method form the basic difference with the
broker (calo) method.

The broker is the second type of intermediary, whose main
interest is to make money as quick as possible. They do not mind
operating in an irresponsible and unethical manner. To them
following ethical and legal rules is less important than giving
lip service and having a friendly relationship with officials,
diplomats and members of the elite.

They do not care what happens to the workers overseas. All
they care about is getting back the money they have lent workers
with huge interest. The workers' families will bear the brunt if
the debt is not paid off.

The calo supplies workers with different skill levels from
Indonesia and other countries to the Middle East, Western Europe
and Eastern Asia.

The third party involved in this business are the governments
of the sending and receiving countries. Faced with an increasing
inflow of people with foreign educations, different work
experiences and cultural backgrounds, and speaking foreign
languages, the receiving country should provide information and
formulate regulations to employ these workers.

These regulations may set conditions and rules for the
duration of employment, qualifications required, language skills,
working conditions and housing, as well as the duties and
responsibilities of organizations/companies employing these
workers.

More important is the position of the sending governments,
such as the Indonesian government. They should provide potential
labor migrants with comprehensive information on working abroad,
including the risks and consequences.

They also need to formulate and reinforce regulations to
prevent their citizens from being maltreated by agents and
employers abroad. Failure to do so leads to abuse, death and
extortion, as evidenced by recurrent reports from labor migrants
from numerous countries, including Indonesia.

Government officials sent to explore the situation abroad
often turn a blind eye. When confronted with problems they tend
to react in a bureaucratic manner and show a blame-the-victim
attitude.

The government of the sending country also should be aware of
the risk of a brain drain when it sends workers for temporary
employment abroad. It is hard to believe that nurses, let alone
medical specialists, are not scarce in a country such as
Indonesia. Specialists in the field of migration are aware that
"nothing is more permanent than temporary workers" in
economically advanced host countries such as in Western Europe.

This has been proven in almost 50 years of labor migration
flows. What to do if these workers do not return? An agreement
should be reached between the sending and receiving countries and
the organizations/companies employing the workers. This agreement
should include formal training for these workers provided or
financed by the employing organizations as part of the employment
contract.

Such training will upgrade the workers' knowledge and will
contribute to the home country's human resources development.
This approach is part of the development aid policy of developed
countries.

The sending abroad of temporary workers should be part of a
rotating system. Returning workers will be guaranteed a job
suitable to their newly obtained qualifications and experience,
while another group of workers will be sent abroad.

This system needs manpower planning, part of the overall
planning at government institutions as well as the private
sector. Effective regulations can prevent the questionable
practices of obscure agencies. These regulations can also be
applied to officials and other concerned people who are easily
lured by bribes.

Tragic stories of desperate job seekers working abroad are
numerous. Striking accounts of ill-treatment, rape, putting women
to work in brothels and the disappearance of migrant workers have
frequently been published.

Such misfortunes were evidenced recently by the firing of two
Indonesian nurses from their jobs without reason and the tragic
death of another Indonesian nurse in the Netherlands. They were
three of some 20 Indonesian nurses sent to the Netherlands by a
retired individual of Indonesian origin, who conducted this
activity "out of idealism", to whom each of these nurses had to
pay at least 6,000 guilders (approximately US$3,000).

These nurses were told they would be able to save 1,000
guilders each month out of their gross monthly salary of 3,000
guilders. After taxes and social premiums were deducted, their
net salaries were about 2,000 guilders. If these nurses lived as
modestly as an average student, they would spend 1,500 guilders
per month for their living and housing expenses, leaving them 500
guilders for their savings. Just half of the illusion. Moreover,
these nurses had no jobs awaiting them on their return to
Indonesia and no obligation to return.

If the government claims that all possible measures have been
taken to protect its workers, why do abuses still occur? For whom
the cap fits, let him or her wear it!

The writer is an economist-demographer based in the
Netherlands.