RI to bring home illegal workers from S. Arabia

JAKARTA (JP): The Armed Forces is sending four Hercules C-130 transport planes and five Navy ships to bring home 9,000 Indonesian workers from Saudi Arabia, spokesman Brig. Gen. A. Wahab Mokodongan said yesterday.

Wahab said that a commercial Boeing-737 airplane had also left yesterday morning, ahead of the Hercules transport planes, to start the evacuation.

Wahab said that the workers being sent home were "problematic", either lacking or having violated their working documents.

"Many of them were working in Saudi Arabia without proper permits as their permits had already expired," he said.

He explained that some workers had violated the terms of their working agreements: "They were described as having driving licenses. Yet, they couldn't even drive cars."

The issue of Indonesian workers in Saudi Arabia has been often debated here. Some argue that many of these workers are ill- trained and that there is little protection of their rights.

But the fact remains that these workers often send home much needed income to their families and this adds to the state's account.

An official at the Ministry of Manpower said that workers from a regency in West Nusa Tenggara province sent home Rp 100 billion (US$27.3 million) a year.

The regency itself had an annual income of just Rp 13 billion, he said.

The official did not say which regency it was.

The issue has come to the fore again as a female worker Nasiroh, 24, awaits a possible death sentence in Saudi Arabia.

She is accused of murdering her employee, Saleh Al Senedi, in 1994.

The housemaid from Cianjur, West Java, is being detained at the Al Buraidah penitentiary in Al Gassem, Saudi Arabia.

Nasiroh, who was sent to Saudi Arabia on June 17, 1993, has admitted to the court that she committed the murder.

But Antara reported that the court has delayed issuing a verdict as prosecutors were unable to present witnesses and Nasiroh herself was unable to correctly handle the gun she allegedly used to shoot her employer.

Separately yesterday, ulemas Ali Yafie, a member of the Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals' (ICMI) board of experts, and Quraisy Shihab, rector of the State Institute of Islamic Studies, called on the Indonesian government to respect the Saudi Arabian legal system.

"We have to respect their execution system, as it is established in the Saudi Arabian legal system," Yafie said.

Shihab also said the government should not interfere with the Saudi Arabian legal system.

State Minister of Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi said the government was employing all its efforts to free Nasaroh.

"Saudi Arabia's legal system is indeed different from ours. Yet, both countries can still negotiate for her release," she said as quoted by Antara yesterday.

She said she wanted the case to be promptly settled. "I'm afraid that it will become a tradition if it is unsettled.

"We do not want similar cases, like what happened to Soleha, to happen again," she said, referring to Soleha Anam Kadiran who was beheaded last month for murdering her employer. (imn/aan)

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