Migrants ignore amnesty offer
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The majority of illegal Indonesian migrants working in Malaysia have chosen to ignore the amnesty offer from Kuala Lumpur.
According to the latest data from a national coordinating post set up to help the illegal migrants return home, only 72,363 of an estimated 180,000 Indonesians working without proper documents have left Malaysia in the past month.
"We have to focus on thousands of people who remain in Malaysia. There will be a massive deportation as soon as the amnesty period ends in January," the Indonesian Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration's director general for placement and training of migrant workers, I Gde Arka, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
He said the poor response of Indonesians to the amnesty offer left the government unable to prepare for upcoming negotiations with Malaysia over the recruitment of migrant workers, as all of its attention would have to be focused on bringing the undocumented migrants home.
To mark the Idul Fitri holiday, the Malaysian government offered illegal Indonesian workers amnesty in exchange for their voluntary exit from the country. The offer originally was due to expire on Nov. 14, but Kuala Lumpur greed to extend it until Jan. 1 due to the large number of undocumented Indonesian workers in the country.
About 500,000 Indonesians are thought to be working illegally in Malaysia, mostly on plantations and at construction sites.
Malaysia introduced a tough new immigration law last year due to a steady increase in the number of illegal migrants in the country.
An official with the Indonesian national coordinating post, Ade Adam Noeh, said the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur was still working to inform Indonesian workers about the amnesty offer.
"We have tried to inform Indonesian workers that they should leave before the amnesty expires, but so far we have been unable to reach many of them," Ade told the Post.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Human Resources Minister Fong Chan Onn said plans to sign an agreement governing the recruitment of Indonesian maids had been postponed indefinitely due to a dispute over the details of the agreement.
"We should not rush into signing a MOU (memorandum of understanding) on maids. We need to hold more discussions before committing to the MOU," he said as quoted by The Star newspaper.
The New Straits Times newspaper said Kuala Lumpur objected to Indonesia's insistence that recruiting agents be allowed to bring in maids regardless of their background and experience.
Arka said it was impossible to stop the agencies from bringing in maids, but the government was trying to tighten the supervision of their recruitment in Indonesia.