Officials found extorting workers to be punished

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)