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.