KL's ban on RI workers a 'time bomb'

KL's ban on RI workers a 'time bomb'

Agencies, Jakarta

Indonesia criticized Malaysia on Monday for Kuala Lumpur's plan
to halve the number of Indonesians working in the country,
warning that the move could backfire and spark an influx of
illegal workers.

Calling the plan unfair, Manpower Minister Jacob Nuwa Wea said
Indonesians wanting to work in Malaysia in the future would more
likely enter the country illegally rather than go through the
official process.

"This decision is unfair because only some out of hundreds
of thousands of people were involved in the violent
demonstration. So it's unfair to send many people home," Jacob
was quoted by Reuters as saying.

"The Malaysian government should remember that reducing or
banning foreign workers can create more problems, such as more
illegal workers ... it will be more difficult to control," he
said.

The plan was made public by Malaysian Home Ministry secretary
general Aseh Che Mat on Sunday only a week after violent clashes
between Indonesian workers and police broke out there.

Che Mat was quoted by the official Bernama news agency
as saying there were 900,000 registered Indonesian workers in
Malaysia. Most are employed in the construction, manufacturing
and plantation sectors and many also work as domestic helpers.

Meanwhile, director of the Center for Labor and Development
Studies Bomer Pasaribu said that Malaysia's plan to halve its
intake of Indonesian workers would worsen unemployment in
Indonesia.

"We are already facing an employment crisis and this will only
add to the pressure that may lead to the explosion of a social
time bomb at home," Bomer, a former manpower minister, told AFP
on Monday.

"If we are talking of unemployment, underemployment and new
workforce entering the market, last year we had some 31 million
people in those categories."

"This year, I estimate that 41 million of our potential
workforce of some 102 million people, or 40.2 percent, will be in
that category," said Pasaribu, adding that the government only
dealt with labor issues on a case by case basis.

He said the government should institute an orderly process for
selecting and sending workers abroad and improve cooperation with
host countries. It could "learn a lot" from the way the
Philippines manages its workers abroad.

Pasaribu said Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur should also address the
"mafias" in each country that handle the inflow of illegal
workers into Malaysia. He said these number were about the same
as, if not more than, the legal number.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirajuda said on Monday
that the Indonesian government could only hope that Malaysia
would not generalize and punish "all Indonesian workers," due to
the recent rioting incidents.

"We hope Malaysia will not make generalizations about
Indonesian workers and later bar all our workers from entering
Malaysia. Most have provided a significant contribution to the
development of Malaysia," Hassan said.

Indonesian workers there will be visited regularly by
officials from the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to ensure
that the workers do not repeat their violent actions.

"They should try and understand that they are guests (in
Malaysia) ... and should abide by local laws," he commented.

Jakarta earns about US$500 million in dollar revenue annually
from the remittances of millions of overseas workers so any
clampdown is a worrying issue for Indonesia, where the government
has predicted unemployment will increase to around 40 million
this year from around 36 million in 2001.

Last week, hundreds of Indonesian workers from a textile
factory attacked police when officers tried to detain
colleagues suspected of taking drugs. Fifteen workers alleged to
have participated in the riots will appear in court on Tuesday,
newspapers reported.

The factory riot came just over a month after more than
1,600 illegal Indonesian immigrants rioted at a detention camp
in southern Johor state and burned down some of their quarters.

Despite the recent ban on the intake of Indonesian workers,
Malaysian manufacturers urged the government on Monday to allow
the employment of Indonesian women workers.

The Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers in a statement said
it supported the ban and a new policy to diversify sources of
foreign labor.

But it called for female Indonesians to be excluded from the
ban, as quoted by AFP.

"This is because the manufacturing sector employs a large
number of female workers from Indonesia. In addition, recruiting
female workers from other source countries may meet with problems
as the supply of female manpower in those countries may not be
forthcoming," it said.