Workers stranded in Jakarta due to SARS

Workers stranded in Jakarta due to SARS

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As many as 11,000 Indonesian migrant workers have been stranded in Jakarta because of worries over Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which has so far claimed the lives of more than 340 people across the globe.

The head of the City Manpower Agency, Ali Zubeir, said on Thursday that the workers were scheduled to depart for a number of countries in the Middle East and East Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Ali said the government had decided that for the time being it would not send migrant workers to SARS-affected countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

He said the workers could not go to the Middle East because countries in the region were not allowing in workers from Indonesia, which they consider to be SARS-affected.

"They fear that our workers would bring the virus there," Ali said.

As of Wednesday at least 343 people worldwide have died of the disease and another 4,288 have been listed as probable SARS cases. There are currently two probable SARS cases in Indonesia.

Ali said he was unsure when the workers would be sent abroad because the situation remained unpredictable.

"It could be one month or three months or more, depending on the situation with the SARS outbreak in the destination countries."

Ali said the recruitment agencies would use the delay to improve the language capabilities of the workers.

"We know that language is one of the deficiencies of our workers. So they should use this time to improve the workers' language capabilities," he said.

Ali said some 40,000 workers were sent abroad from Jakarta every month.

There are 290 registered recruitment agencies in the city supplying Indonesian workers to overseas countries, mostly to work as maids.