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)