Officials found extorting workers to be punished
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief yesterday promised to look into reports that labor officials are extorting money from workers arriving at the Soekarno-Hatta Airport from other countries.
"I will order an investigation into the report and see to it that those found guilty will be punished," he told journalists after installing Commodore Amin Sumarsono as the inspector general at the ministry here.
Sumarsono, a former senior officer at the Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS), now called the Armed Forces Intelligence Agency (BIA), replaced Abdillah Nusi -- who has been named director of the state-owned insurance company PT Astek.
Latief asked newspapers to name any officials under his ministry who have extorted money from workers who have just arrived from their work overseas.
"All government officials have name tags on their chests... Mention their identities in your papers to make it easier for us to investigate," he told reporters.
The latest report on alleged extortion of workers returning from abroad was carried in the yesterday's Kompas newspaper.
The report said workers, mostly women who work as housemaids in Saudi Arabia, were forced to pay Rp 30,000 each to officials of the Ministry of Manpower. Some workers said officials forced them to pay another Rp 200,000 to Rp 300,000 for transportation to their home villages.
The minister said it was "irrational and unacceptable" that workers were made to pay that much for transport. "But I will have it checked," he said.
He said that a team of the Manpower Ministry has been temporarily deployed at the airport to handle Indonesian workers who are going to and coming from abroad.
He also said he would meet with Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto to discuss ways of transporting Indonesian workers from overseas to their home villages.
Latief said he hopes that the transportation minister will provide a special lounge at the airport for workers who depart to and come from abroad.
The government, he said, is considering proposals to open airports other than Soekarno-Hatta for arrivals of workers from overseas. "Ideally, if a worker's home village is in East Java, he or she needs only to stop over at the airport and continue the flight to Surabaya."
Small business
Also yesterday, the manpower minister met with the central board of the Association of Indonesian Small-Scale Businesses (HIPLI) to discuss further cooperation between the ministry and HIPLI.
HIPLI Chairman Feber Purba told reporters after the meeting that the two sides agreed to set up a small joint team to seek possibilities in what fields they could cooperate.
HIPLI now needs over 66,000 skilled university graduates to provide consulting service for around 34 million small-scale businesses in the country, he said. (rms)