Indonesian workers face gloomy prospects under AFTA

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia may not be able to immediately benefit from the opening of the labor market in the Southeast Asian region next year due to poor preparation and the low education of the majority of its workers, experts have said.

More developed economies like Singapore and Malaysia will also likely turn to the Philippines for low-skilled workers such as housemaids and gardeners because Indonesia has not certified the low-skilled professions to international standards.

"Most (low-skill) workers in Indonesia have no certified competence because they are recruited and employed on the basis of their education background and only a small group of workers in health, legal, construction, tourism and maritime sectors are included into the category of professionals with certified competence," said Bomer Pasaribu, chairman of the Center for Labor and Development Studies (CLDS), recently.

Bomer, who is also a former minister of manpower, said that the Indonesian government had been too slow in making preparations to anticipate the upcoming regional liberalization drive as it had been concentrating on dealing with the economic crisis at home.

The Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) is due to take effect next year, with all 10 member countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) opening up their labor markets in 12 main sectors including communications, transportation, education, health, finance and tourism.

Chief of the Center for Research, Development and Information at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, Harry Heriawan Saleh, said that seen from the labor perspective, the Indonesian labor sector was not prepared to compete in the free trade era, not only because its infrastructure and superstructure were not prepared, but mainly because most workers do not have certified competencies and skills.

"We have no accurate information or databases on labor potentials in all sectors. We cannot calculate now the number of workers we can export when AFTA is officially launched next year," he said.

He added that workers were not prepared to go global because a majority of them were poorly educated and unskilled.

Most workers were low-skilled and have poor education because 57 percent, or 52 million, of the country's 103 million workforce education stopped at elementary school; 39 percent graduated from junior or senior high school; and only 2.7 percent, or 2.45 million, graduated from university.

Mula Basa Hutabarat, secretary of the directorate general for financial institutions at the Ministry of Finance, which coordinated the service trade issue, said that trade and industry associations have also contributed to the country's unpreparedness to enter the free trade era because so far, only a few associations have set standard competencies in their own sectors.

"So far, only a few professional associations in the mining, tourism, construction, maritime, health and information sectors have drawn up their standard competencies complete with basic salaries," he said.

He said that all 12 main sectors to be liberalized under AFTA have now been asked to design job competencies for their respective sectors, and certify them in accordance with national and international standards.