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.