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)