Labour Minister Reveals Companies Misusing National Internship Participants

Labour Minister Yassierli has revealed instances of companies misusing national internship participants. According to Yassierli, these misuses were identified based on direct reports from the interns themselves and the public. “We manage thousands of companies, so we have created a system with mechanisms for complaints from interns and the public, which we follow up on,” Yassierli stated at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs office in Jakarta on Thursday (23/4/2026). Yassierli did not disclose the list of companies involved in the misuse. However, he emphasised that the Ministry of Manpower has taken action by adding the offending companies to a blacklist, barring them from future placements of national interns. “Several companies have been reprimanded, blacklisted, the interns have been rescued and relocated, and so on. That is certainly one of the mechanisms,” he explained. He also assured that the Ministry of Manpower will implement stricter monitoring mechanisms for companies hosting national interns in the future. “This means we also need to ensure that these internship companies take responsibility and ownership,” Yassierli stressed. According to Yassierli, the misuses include working hours exceeding limits. There are also mismatches in assigned tasks, such as those not aligning with the interns’ field of study. “For example, working hours. Even though we state they are not workers. Secondly, regarding the scope: initially, it was said that the company needs this because it matches the competencies of S1 graduates. But the work turns out to be more like receptionist duties, and so on,” he elaborated. As is known, the National Internship Programme was first implemented in 2025 with a quota of 100,000 interns. The government is preparing to reopen the programme this year. Participants in the programme receive stipends from the government, termed pocket money, equivalent to the provincial minimum wage to support living costs during training and practical work at companies or institutions.