Maid abuse up, Hassan said consulates to protect
The Jakarta Post Jakarta
Amid rising reports of case of abuse of Indonesian workers abroad, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda reiterated on Tuesday that the government would step up its efforts to provide protection for the migrant workers, most of whom work as housemaids in the Middle East and in neighboring countries.
Many cases of unskilled workers being abused by their employers have been reported. And Indonesian missions abroad are also criticized for their relatively poor attention to the problem. Hassan's statement was apparently a response to such criticism.
The minister said as long as the country's economy was still not able to make jobs for the tens of millions of unemployed, the numbers of Indonesians who are forced to work abroad would remain high.
"That is why we must change the image of our representative offices abroad from the office of government officials to be a Indonesian home which protects its citizens," Hassan said.
Deutche Pressee-Agentur reported a Hong Kong housewife has been jailed to nine months in prison for punishing her Indonesian maid by burning her with a hot iron. Cheong Un-ieng, 62, pressed the hot iron against 19-year-old Zuliatin's back as she bent down to mop up water she had spilled on the floor in her apartment.
The assault left Zuliatin with second degree burns on her back and two scars over 10 centimeters long, the news agency report said. Cheong, a mother of three, told the maid not to tell anyone about the attack, warning her that she would be sent back to Indonesia if she did.
However, Zuliatin sneaked out of the apartment in Hong Kong's Wan Chai district on the pretext of dumping the trash and asked a passerby for help before going to the police.
Cheong denied causing grievous bodily harm but was convicted of the offense and jailed after a trial which ended Monday.
Another housewife, Liu Man-kuen, 33, was jailed for 18 months in 2000 for ironing the back of her 28-year-old Indonesian maid's hands as punishment for scorching a blouse with the same iron.
More than 200,000 women, mostly from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, work as live-in maids for Hong Kong families, doing housework and child care for a government-set minimum wage of US$400 a month.
From Kuala Lumpur, the Associated Press reported that an Indonesian woman being forced to work as a prostitute in Malaysia climbed out of a 17th-floor window to raise the alarm that led to her controllers' arrest on Monday.
Police were called by security guards who saw a woman outside an apartment on the 17th floor waving her arms at them, the report said. The woman later told police she had been brought to Malaysia by the men, who had promised her work as a waitress but had forced her into prostitution instead.
Fourteen women from Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam aged from 17 to 25 were taken into custody and three Malaysian men were arrested after police went to the apartment.
Senior police official Mohammed Azmir Mohd Nazri said none of the 14 women had proper travel documents, and it appeared the apartment was being used by a prostitution ring. The men and women involved were being held while investigations continued, Mohammed was cited as saying.