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.