Indonesian workers recount plight in Singapore

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A modest housewife from a village in Magetan regency, East Java, 52 year-old Binarti was not a woman with many words.

But her faint tone, watery eyes and mournful expression clearly displayed the grief of a mother whose child was facing a life sentence in a foreign country.

Binarti's eldest daughter, Sundarti Supriyanto, a 24 year-old domestic worker in Singapore, had been sentenced to death last year for murdering her Singaporean employer, Angie Ng, along with Mrs Ng's two year-old daughter Crystal, then burning their apartment and illegally using Mrs Ng's ATM card, in June 2003.

After the Indonesian Embassy there sought clemency for Sundarti, her sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison.

Binarti said she was not aware of the life sentence for her daughter. It was not easy for her to understand that her own child was capable of committing such a crime. She only hoped somebody could do something more to further reduce Sundarti's sentence.

"I hope the (Singaporean) government will grant (another) clemency. I want my child to be protected," Binarti told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Sundarti's case added to the long list of problems for migrant workers, especially in Singapore, where there are approximately 45,000 Indonesians working as maids.

From 1999 to 2005, at least 114 Indonesian domestic workers have died, mostly by falling from high story buildings.

In 2004 alone, there were 26 cases of death among Indonesian domestic workers with causes ranging from falling from apartment buildings (the majority), suicides, train crashes, illnesses and drug abuse.

In the first month of this year alone, three people have already died by falling from high buildings.

"One was killed while working, one allegedly committed suicide, and another fell while trying to escape. She was using scarves tied together with knots to jump down from a window," Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore Mochamad Slamet Hidayat told a discussion on Singaporean migrant workers on Tuesday.

He said there were numerous other cases affecting domestic workers in Singapore.

In 2004, the embassy provided emergency housing to 198 workers who had ran away from their employers due to harsh treatment, overwork, abuse, and unpaid salaries.

The Embassy also received 89 police reports in the same year of cases of stealing involving Indonesian workers.

There were also five children born outside of wedlock, mostly to Bangladeshi boyfriends.

Hidayat blamed problems with Indonesian maids in Singapore on chaotic mechanisms in the recruitment processes at home.

"There is no coordination and control, the process from job order until the issuance of passports is not integrated. Thus identity fraud is rampant," the ambassador said.

The workers sent were young, even underaged, women with only elementary school education and with barely any skills or job training.

The pressure of work and difficulties adjusting to the new environment caused psychological problems for the unskilled workers. They are also unaware of their own rights as workers and how to tackle abuse.

"What amazes me is how they pass the medical tests. Some of them have tuberculosis, chronic liver and kidney disease, and some have heart attacks in the first months they work here," Hidayat said.

Activist Lies Sugondo from the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) said domestic workers should be given education on life skills, reproductive health and sex.

"Most of the workers have been brought up with the perception that women are inferior to men, so they are powerless when it comes to male employers," Lies said.

She claimed that the right to a day off work is still a luxury for many as they have to work 24-7, and that this practice had to be fought by the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore.

"The Embassy should gather the workers together at least once a week to give them training," Lies added.

According to Hidayat, his embassy has been conducting monthly training for workers there on, among other things, how to cook.

The embassy, he added, has also been giving Indonesian maids Mandarin and English classes in anticipation of Singapore's plan to enforce a new rule in April, which imposes English and mathematics tests on maids.

The regulation also requires all domestic workers to be at least 23 years old, with at least eight years of school education.

Other programs being held by the embassy are the implementation of an accreditation system for migrant worker recruitment agencies, and conducting regular programs on radio stations in Batam, Jakarta and Singapore to educate workers.

"What is urgent I guess is a one-stop-shop policy. Every worker going to Singapore should enter through Batam. It will be easier for us to control the process there," Hidayat said.