'Workers' corpses sent all legally'

JAKARTA (JP): The bodies of two Indonesian workers that arrived in Lombok last week in a cardboard package labeled "fragile" were sent from Malaysia legally, Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief said yesterday.

The airmail package was sent to the family of one of the deceased with the consent of the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Latief said in a hearing with House Commission VI on manpower affairs.

The minister was responding to House members' enquiries about his ministry's stand on the package from Malaysia.

"The story was dramatized (by the press)," he said. "No wonder the reports ceased when officials gave the right version of the case."

The large package was received on Jan. 19 by Inaq Agus, who recognized one of the corpses as his 20-year-old son who had been working in Malaysia. The other body was identified several days later.

News about the package made front page headlines in local newspapers for several days.

Latief explained that the Indonesian Embassy in Malaysia had provided all the necessary documents after being notified about the plan to send the workers' bodies back home.

"We (the ministry) also have the Malaysian doctors' statements about the laborers' deaths and the necessary legal papers," he said.

PT Bijak, the manpower supplier which sent the workers to Malaysia, was committed to overseeing the matter, including the payment of their insurance, the minister said.

Quoting the doctors' statements, Latief said the workers were killed in a road accident.

They had planned to cut short their terms of contract and go home before they were killed, Latief said.

Thousands of people from Lombok work legally or otherwise in Malaysia. (12)