Susilo to visit Malaysia to defuse labor dispute
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Bogor
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will meet with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi during a one-day visit to Kuala Lumpur on Monday, with the main subject of discussion to be the sensitive issue of illegal Indonesian workers in that country.
Susilo has vowed to raise the issue of Malaysian employers not paying Indonesian workers.
The Indonesian government announced last week it would hire lawyers to sue the Malaysian employers, a threat that upset some Malaysian officials, who said it was the workers who broke the law in the first place.
"The reaction in Indonesia has been extreme ... is this the Asian way -- to bite the hand of friendship?" the Star daily said in a commentary earlier this week, as quoted by AP. The paper noted that Malaysia was the first country to deploy aid workers to Aceh following the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami.
While waiting for the salaries due to them, many of the estimated 500,000 illegal workers in Malaysia, most Indonesians, have refused to go home under a government amnesty program, according to reports.
Indonesian workers perform many of the menial jobs in Malaysia, being employed on construction sites and plantations, in restaurants and as maids.
Susilo, who will be making his first bilateral visit since assuming office in October, has described the nonpayment of wages as a "serious violation" of labor rights.
Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Thursday it was the illegal workers who were flouting Malaysian laws, and said Kuala Lumpur did not "want this matter to involve the legal process".
Since the government amnesty program began in October, during which illegal migrants are allowed to leave the country without fear of punishment, about 400,000 illegal workers, mostly Indonesians, have left Malaysia.
A crackdown on remaining illegal migrants will begin soon but no date has been set by Malaysia, which has already extended the amnesty three times at Indonesia's request -- a move seen by many Malaysians as kowtowing to Indonesia, AP reported.
Separately, the group Migrant CARE said the number of Indonesians working in Malaysia was more than 3.5 million, with about 2.5 million of the Indonesians working in the country legally.
Of about 1.2 million illegal workers, 350,000 have returned to Indonesia.
Migrant CARE said thousands of other illegal workers were still in Malaysia because they were never informed of the amnesty program or the impending government crackdown by their Malaysian employers, who were afraid of a mass departure.
Many Indonesian workers also have not returned home because their Malaysian employers have not paid their salaries, according to the group.
Meanwhile, Ribka Tjiptaning, deputy chairwoman of Indonesia's House of Representatives Commission IX for manpower and health, said fellow legislators had visited Malaysia to get firsthand information on the issue.
According to Ribka, the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur had done little to help Indonesian workers.
"Officials at the Indonesian Consulate General know nothing about manpower regulations in Malaysia. How can they provide protection to Indonesian workers if they know nothing about the regulations? The minister of foreign affairs should dismiss them," she said in Bogor, West Java, on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Antara reported that as thousands of Indonesian workers fled Malaysia, the money transferred monthly from the neighboring country to the workers' home villages was sharply decreasing.
The head of Bank Indonesia's office in Kediri, East Java, Imbang Setiamihardja, said the amount of money transferred from Malaysia to banks in Kediri had declined by 7.3 percent since the workers began leaving Malaysia.
"In January and February this year, the amount of money transferred was Rp 177.6 billion, while in the same period last year it was Rp 191.7 billion," Imbang said.
Other regencies in the province, including Tulungagung, Blitar and Nganjuk, have reported similar downturns in transfer transactions, Antara said.