New company founded to watch labor exporters
New company founded to watch labor exporters
JAKARTA (JP): The government yesterday launched a new company,
called PT Bina Jasa Karya (Bijak), which has the tasks to bring
to order the business of sending Indonesian workers overseas and
to ensure greater protection for them abroad.
The new company, which was incorporated with initial capital
of Rp 5 billion ($2.4 million), is administered by the Ministry
of Manpower and is a subsidiary of PT Astek, the government-owned
labor insurance company.
Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief inducted the company's board
of directors at his office yesterday.
Soeramsihono, former director of the defunct interstate
manpower institution (AKAN), was appointed as president; Idu
Supri as finance director; Siti Elly Iskandar Jenie as director
of administrative affairs; Sofyan Hawadi as director of marketing
and development, and Aulia Iman Santoso as director of placement.
Latief stressed that the new company is not intended to
control the activities of manpower supplier companies nor to
compete with them, but rather it will help them improve the
quality of the workers sent abroad and diversify the
destinations.
Incompetence
"PT Bijak is not a rival company. It is expected to help
manpower supplier companies to modernize themselves so that they
will be more professional in sending workers to work overseas"
Manpower supplier companies have been widely criticized in the
past for their incompetence and neglect, reflected in the endless
complaints from workers about extortion and other forms of
maltreatment.
The new government company is expected to address these
complaints.
Latief said the huge capital of PT Bijak would be used mainly
as venture capital for supplier companies in upgrading their
facilities and management.
The company will also open representative offices in some of
the major destinations to help ensure that workers there get
legal protection, he said.
"All Indonesians working overseas must have legal protection
in the future and it must be explicitly included in working
contracts between workers and their employers," he said,
underlining that the hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers
now in the Middle East, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other countries
do not enjoy legal protection and social security.
Latief has traveled to Saudi Arabia and Malaysia in recent
months during which he secured the agreements from the two
governments on the protection of Indonesian workers.
Sending Indonesian workers abroad has become a major source of
foreign exchange revenues for Indonesia in recent years. The
workers remit some $150 million each year.
The government's program, which sets a target of sending one
million workers in the next five years, also includes plans to
phase out sending unskilled workers.
"We will mostly send skilled, trained workers with an income
of around US$400 monthly," he said. (rms)