RI vows to boost labor cooperation with neighbors

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara

Indonesia and several other ASEAN member countries and dialog partners made a commitment to improve the quality of workers and provide better legal protection for the migrant workers they employ.

During their bilateral talks, Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea and South Korean Labor Deputy Minister Park Kil-sang agreed to enhance cooperation in training workers and to provide legal protection for tens of thousands of Indonesian workers employed in the East Asian country.

"We are committed to preparing memorandums of understanding (MOUs) as soon as possible to implement the cooperation. The South Korean labor deputy minister expressed his readiness to carry out training programs for Indonesian workers both in South Korea and Indonesia and to provide better legal protection for Indonesian workers working in that country," he said.

Nuwa Wea said the South Korean government was discussing the status of Indonesian workers employed as apprentices in small- scale industries in South Korea and the timeframe of their contracts.

He said that tens of thousands of Indonesian workers had been employed as apprentices, earning a monthly salary that was lower than the minimum wage for that country since the law prohibits the employment of foreign workers.

"Besides the effort to get South Korea to extend the employment period in the labor contract to three years from the current two years, about 12,000 Indonesian workers are working illegally because they stayed and worked there even though their contracts expired," he said.

Since the apprenticeship program was launched in 1994, more than 70,000 Indonesian workers have been employed as apprentices in South Korea.

Nuwa Wea further said in his bilateral talks with Singapore's delegation leader that he would propose Batam in Riau to be the sole transit point and gateway for workers to be employed in Singapore.

"The government will gather all workers to be employed in Singapore and put them on the island. We will build a labor training center there to train all jobseekers. Let Singapore recruiters come to the island since the island shares a border with the city state," he said.

Nuwa Wea said that he and Malaysian deputy labor minister Abdul Latiff Ahmad would also discuss the planned signing of a memorandum of understanding on the supply of labor to Malaysia, following the mass expulsion of Indonesian workers from that country last year.

He said that Indonesia would not allow Malaysia to directly recruit workers from Indonesia as the country had wanted to do for some time.

"Indonesia is a sovereign country and concerning labor recruitment, Malaysia should comply with the official procedures enforced in Indonesia. Malaysia should recruit workers through Indonesian labor supply companies and it should be ready to draw up a standard labor contract to provide legal protection for Indonesian workers working in that country," he said.

Malaysia expelled last year more than 170,000 of about 400,000 undocumented Indonesian workers, in line with the enforcement of a stiffer immigration law there.