RI to continue exporting workers

RI to continue exporting workers

JAKARTA (JP): The government intends to continue sending
female workers abroad but wants their skills to improve, State
Minister of Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi quoted President Soeharto
as saying here yesterday.

Mien met with the President to report that she had been asked
by countries she visited recently if, from later this year,
Indonesia would stop sending female workers abroad.

Mien recently visited Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, the
United Arab Emirates and Brunei Darussalam. She acknowledged that
to obtain travel documents, young female workers sometimes lied
about their ages.

Some of them were also unqualified to work abroad as they had
only completed first grade, she said.

There are 12,000 Indonesian registered workers in Malaysia,
26,000 in Hong Kong, 21,000 in Singapore and 10,000 in Brunei
Darussalam.

Mien said the President called on women's organizations to
conduct vocational training for women to improve their work
skills.

He stressed that the sending of Indonesian workers abroad
should be coordinated by the local administration, the
directorate general for immigration and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

On arriving in his/her destination country, every worker
should report to the Indonesian Embassy, she added.

Most Indonesian Embassies do not know how many Indonesians are
working in their countries, she said.

"This is our own mistake. We cannot blame other countries for
this," she quoted Soeharto as saying.

Mien made the trip following reports of Indonesian women
workers being mistreated, even forced into prostitution, in
foreign countries. Earlier this month she said that 28 Indonesian
women working as domestic helpers in Singapore had been
mistreated by their employers.

The workers had taken refuge at the Indonesian embassy complex
in the city state, State Minister of Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi
said after meeting Sunday with 1,000 Indonesians, mostly female
laborers, working in Singapore.

"Some workers were abducted for several months and were made
to toil day and night," she said. Many complained their wages
were withheld although they had worked for several months, others
said they had been raped by their employers.

Unable to bear the hardship, some workers broke out of their
employers' apartments, by tying bed sheets together and climbing
down the outside walls, and sought refuge in the embassy, Mien
said.

Part of the problem, she said, was the dishonest Indonesian
manpower suppliers, who sent the workers to Singapore, and who
sought nothing but profit. They hardly cared about contacting the
workers to check on whether they had proper legal protection.

The government is determined to phase out the export of
unskilled workers. It hopes that by the end of 2004 only trained
workers will be sent abroad. (swe)