Migrants ignore amnesty offer
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.