RI to pick up 5,000 workers in S. Arabia
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia will send Air Force planes to pick up about 5,000 illegal workers stranded in Saudi Arabia, Antara reported Saturday.
Air Force Chief of Staff Marshall Sutria Tubagus said Friday the Air Force had readied five C-130 Hercules planes to repatriate the Indonesians. "We'll do it very soon," he said, but did not give any timetable.
Antara reported that Saudi immigration authorities had for the past two weeks detained 1,000 Indonesians for either overstaying their visas or lacking documents to stay there.
The workers were netted in a massive operation launched following a three-month amnesty period which expired recently.
Saudi Arabia aims to flush out more than 100,000 illegal workers there. A similar number of illegal aliens left the country during an amnesty period in 1995.
Antara said the workers staged a demonstration almost every day for the past 15 days in protest of the operation.
Thousands of workers from Indonesia, the world's largest Moslem nation, are legally employed in Saudi Arabia, mostly as domestic helpers, nurses and laborers. Many of those who work illegally have for the past two weeks reportedly sought refuge at Indonesian representative offices in Jeddah and Riyadh.
About one-third of Saudi Arabia's population of 18 million are expatriates, with most coming from India. Other expatriates come from countries like Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt.
The news agency also reported that Saudi Home Affairs Minister Nayef Ibnu Abdel Aziz said his country would impose firm sanctions in carrying out the flushing-out operation.
According to Aziz, the punishment given to those found guilty of overstaying permits was a minimum six-month jail term or a maximum fine of US$26,000 (100,000 riyals).
A Saudi citizen found guilty of providing protection for violators of the new regulation would be subject to a fine of $13,000.
He said that before the regulation was tightly implemented, workers who did not have complete immigration documents were given a pardon without punishment.
Attache
Separately, on Friday, Attorney General Singgih said it was time for Indonesia to place a prosecution attache in Saudi Arabia, whose task would be to study and handle law violations committed by Indonesians there.
"My office will be making a proposal to that effect to appropriate government authorities," Singgih was quoted by Antara as saying.
Singgih was asked to comment on the recent execution of Soleha Anam Kadiran, an Indonesian domestic helper convicted of killing her Saudi employer.
"It was prescribed by the law in Saudi Arabia," Singgih said while adding that he did not know much about Saudi law.
"Here, when a foreigner breaks the law, his or her embassy is notified. The case (in Saudi Arabia) appears to be different -- there is no such requirement," he said. "Probably because there is no prosecution attache (at the Indonesian Embassy)."
Separately, Minister of Justice Oetojo Oesman said that had better communication existed between the two countries, the Soleha case would have ended differently.
"The Indonesian Embassy there was reportedly not informed of the case, so that its effort to help Soleha came too late," Oetojo was quoted by Antara as saying. (swe)