Riau feels the brunt of workers problems

Riau feels the brunt of workers problems

JAKARTA (JP): The provincial administration of Riau is feeling
the brunt of the flow of Indonesian workers being deported from
Malaysia as it has to finance their trips to their home villages.

Zaiman Nurmatias, the head of the Riau branch office of the
Ministry of Manpower, said the administration each month has to
handle hundreds of Indonesians who have been sent home by
Malaysia for trying to work in the country illegally.

"Very often they were simply dropped by the Malaysian
authorities at remote and difficult locations, and the Riau
administration has to pick them up," Zaiman was quoted by the
Antara news agency as saying in Pekanbaru, capital of the Riau
archipelago.

Citing an example, he said that last month some 40 Indonesian
workers who were deported by Malaysia were shipped back and
off-loaded at a remote location in Bengkalis. "We had to pick
them up and send them to their home villages."

He pointed out that there is an existing agreement between the
Indonesian and Malaysian governments stating that Indonesian
deportees should be sent to Dumai, still in Riau province but
located inland in Sumatra and therefore well connected by land
transportation to the rest of the country.

Zaiman said handling the deportees has strained the budget of
the Riau administration. He said that the provincial government
has not been allocated a special budget for this kind of work.

He conceded that Riau's proximity to Malaysia has also made it
a favorite gateway for Indonesians intending to work in Malaysia,
legally or otherwise, including those whose departure is
organized by employment agencies.

"Some of them made it into Malaysia, but many were caught and
deported, through Riau, and sent back to their home villages in
Java, Madura, Lombok and Sulawesi," he said.

He added that the Riau provincial government cannot deter all
workers bound for Malaysia because it does not have the necessary
facilities to constantly patrol all the waters around the
archipelago.

More than one million Indonesians are estimated to be working
in Malaysia, half of them illegally, officials said. (rms)