Human tragedy looms in Nunukan

Human tragedy looms in Nunukan

Fitri Wulandari and Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Nunukan, East
Kalimantan

If the central government does not step in quickly, a human
disaster might occur in the squalid migrant workers' camps in
Nunukan, East Kalimantan, after 66 people died due to lack of
food, clean water and proper sanitation.

More and more illegal workers are arriving in this tiny island
of 40,000 people. Many of them -- 17,913 workers -- have been
sent back to Malaysia with whatever documents they have, and more
are being shipped to their hometowns.

Some 23,700 refugee workers remain, including children,
crowding the island, and many more will be coming from Sabah,
Malaysia, and from other areas in the country, having tried their
luck to enter Malaysia.

"New people keep coming here. Many of them came from Surabaya
(East Java) and South Sulawesi. You can find them among these
deported migrant workers," Khotaman, field coordinator of the
Nunukan regency's migrant worker task force, told The Jakarta
Post on Sunday.

And yet, the Nunukan regency administration has taken a
surprising decision to stop sending workers to nearby Malaysia,
especially those who arrive on the island after Sept. 1.

"We will accept no applications from migrant workers who have
been sent here from Sabah (Malaysia) since Sept. 1, unless they
who have a job order and work contract," said a report signed by
Nunukan regent Abdul Hafid Achmad, dated Aug. 31.

The report, which was made available to the Post on Sunday,
has been presented to the Tim 12, a joint monitoring team formed
by Jakarta, which ended its visit to the regency on Saturday.

It was not clear yet what prompted the administration to take
such a decision, but sources at the administration's migrant
worker task force said the decision was taken at the employers'
request.

Team secretary M. Hasan Basri, who is also the head of the
Labor and Transmigration office in Nunukan, said the
administration was currently processing the documents of 13,422
applicants. Many more were waiting in line for documentation to
go back to Malaysia.

"Most of those who have insisted on going back to their former
employers could not show a job order or other legal contract," he
said.

The decision will surely worsen conditions for the thousands
of refugee workers on the island.

Khotaman predicted that another 60,000 to 80,000 Indonesian
workers would arrive from Sabah this month.

They were mostly working at oil palm plantations in Sabah
without valid documentation.

Because of the influx of migrant workers, the island now lacks
clean water and is suffering from an accumulation of waste.

The smell of the garbage and of the dense crowd of people
fills the dusty air.

Flocks of the deported workers can be spotted on nearly every
square meter of the island.

The unlucky spend the night on sidewalks, the city square,
vacant plots of land or buildings, the market and even in front
of residents' houses.

Although the administration has also provided facilities for
them, the sheer number of people is well beyond their capacity to
handle them.

Those registered with worker exporting companies stay in
makeshift tents provided by the companies and receive simple
daily rations.

Twenty-year-old Elizabeth from Ende, Flores, East Nusa
Tenggara, is in a shelter provided by worker supplier PT Alfira
Perdana Jaya, the largest in Nunukan and sheltering around 4,000
deported workers. She said that she had to pay Rp 1,000 (10 U.S.
cents) to bathe and another Rp 2,000 to wash her clothes.

"I cannot stand it here. I cannot eat properly. It's cold at
night and you have to pay for everything. I wouldn't be here if
it wasn't for the supplier," Elizabeth said on Saturday night at
her sleeping space on a wooden platform shared with a dozen
others.

Elizabeth, who arrived at the camp a week ago, had worked for
one-and-a-half years at an oil palm plantation owned by a member
of the Sabah royal family.

PT Alfira, owned by Haji Ramli, provided her with a tourist
visa valid for a maximum of one month.

Elizabeth's employer had cut her salary for three consecutive
months, amounting to RM 300 (around $80), to repay her expenses
to get to Sabah.

The employer, she said, had also provided her with another RM
600 to get proper documentation.

"The supplier had taken RM 450, which they said was the
expenses needed to process the documents," she said, adding that
she had been promised another month of waiting before she could
join her Flores husband and ten-month-old baby boy back in Sabah.

"I have nothing to say. I just want to get back to my work,"
she remarked.