Not all greener pastures for female overseas workers
Not all greener pastures for female overseas workers
By Becky Mowbray
PONOROGO, EAST JAVA (JP): Just about everything except
economic opportunity grows in the fertile highlands above
Ponorogo's villages.
Many local women seek greener pastures in the kitchens and
broom closets of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. They are
among some 900,000 Indonesians, 70 to 80 percent of them women,
who work in mainly unskilled jobs overseas.
Ponorogo's women say that leaving a life that is all they've
ever known is more a financial necessity than a choice. By going
overseas, they trade a Rp 2,500 (US$1.02) daily farm wage for a
Rp 400,000 ($163.26) to Rp 800,000 ($326.53) monthly salary.
In the upcoming fiscal year, these overseas migrant workers
are expected to sweep $871 million into Indonesia's economy,
according to the Ministry of Finance, and the number of migrant
workers and their financial contribution is only expected to
increase.
Tati Krisnawati, director of the Jakarta organization Women's
Solidarity, believes the number of migrant workers and their
financial contribution is already much higher. "I think this
number is not really valid because a lot of them are
undocumented," she said.
Krisnawati puts the number of overseas migrant workers at
several times the government estimate as many work outside of
Indonesia illegally, and even those who start with official
documents often overstay their contracts.
This number of overseas migrant workers began increasing in
the 1970s. Increasing rural unemployment in areas like Ponorogo
left many women unemployed, at the same time that the oil boom in
the Middle East and increasing prosperity of the Asian tigers
created demand for domestic help.
Migrant labor from Indonesia is part of a growing
international trend where labor seeks to become as mobile as
capital -- and the trend shows no signs of abating.
The fruits of labor of those who left the fields are scattered
around Ponorogo, where new houses and land holdings are the
public record of the overseas work of wives and daughters.
Sukiati, 57, left her husband and family for five years to
work in Saudi Arabia. While she was there, she made the haj
pilgrimage twice, and upon her return she bought rice fields,
land and built a new house that would be regarded as comfortable
by any standard.
Her daughter, Sumiati, built a house next door for her family
after working for four years in Saudi Arabia. Sumiati plans to
make another work tour of the Middle East to ensure a strong
financial future for her children.
Sumiati's older sister is still in Saudi Arabia, where she has
been working for three years while her mother and sister care for
her children.
But there are dozens of nightmares for every rags to riches
story that tempts Ponorogo women to fulfill their dreams of
financial security.
Once in their overseas posts, many women find themselves
working 15-hour days, subject to sexual harassment and even rape
by their employers. Most are prisoners in these situations
because they lack legal immigration documents and are afraid to
go to the police, or they are little more than indentured
servants working off recruitment fees.
Recruiting workers for posts has become a lucrative industry
in itself. Recruiting agencies charge prospective migrants Rp
300,000 to Rp 2 million in fees, while the actual cost of
documents amounts to only Rp 200,000. Since poverty is what draws
the women overseas in the first place, these fees are often taken
against future earnings.
Many of the recruiters are illegal and provide the naive
recruits with false passports, leaving them estranged in a far-
off land without legal protection.
Even if a woman does receive wages after she has paid back the
recruiter, these are often sent to the false address listed on
her passport, extorted from her by immigration officials or
squandered back at home by her husband and family.
Despair
When Tukirun's wife Jemitun left Ponorogo nearly a year ago to
work as a domestic helper in Malaysia, he believed there would be
regular paychecks in the mail to him and his four children.
Instead, he received letters of despair. Jemitun's work
contract was phony and she has twice been sold in Malaysia. She
works long days without a break, a slave of a police officer's
family. She is ill, needs medical care and says she wants to die.
But it is now eight months since her second letter and all
communication has ceased. Diplomatic channels have yielded no
results and her family has yet to see a paycheck from her labor.
Tukirun spends his days trying to distract the children from
worrying about their mother and believes only a shaman's powers
can bring her home.
Another of Ponorogo's tales of deception is that of Kamsiatin,
a victim of false documents and naivete.
Determined not to have her experience repeated by others,
Kamsiatin now works as a peer trainer for the Rural Development
Foundation in Malang. The program empowers prospective migrant
workers to handle situations overseas.
Kamsiatin paid Rp 450,000 to a recruiter on her first attempt
to work abroad in 1992. But the job in Saudi Arabia never
materialized, her passport failed to arrive and she didn't get
her money back.
Later that year a job did come through, and one night she
found herself on a crowded motorboat heading from Batam to
Malaysia. The mode of transit might have set off alarms for a
seasoned traveler, but Kamsiatin didn't recognize that anything
was out of the ordinary since it was her first trip outside the
country.
Kamsiatin paid Rp 200,000 up front and signed over three
months wages as payment for all the paperwork. But once in
Malaysia she and 50 other migrant workers were locked in a house
for two weeks while they waited for their placements.
During the three years that Kamsiatin worked for a family in
Batu Pahat, Johor, she was not allowed to leave for fear of being
arrested by immigration authorities. Without the proper
documentation, she could not return to Indonesia.
An extra 500 ringgit (Rp 485,000) finally did get her back to
her homeland in 1995. But she has still not received 10 months of
her salary because it was sent to the fake address listed in her
passport.