Jakarta – Hundreds of women yesterday staged a rally against a phony recruitment firm that swindled them out of millions of rupiah.
The illegal manpower agency, PT Shaymma based in Lampung province, had promised about 250 women that it would provide jobs for them in Saudi Arabia, providing that they each paid a registration fee of Rp4 million (US$423).
Most of the duped workers were from Lampung, while a handful were from Java. PT Shaymma had three months ago promised the women that it would register them with an East Jakarta-based company, PT Suma Jaya, which would then send them abroad as soon as possible.
After each handing over Rp4 million, the women were sent to a dormitory on Jalan Kramat Aris in Cilangkap, East Jakarta. For weeks on end they were neglected by both companies and had to use their own money to buy food.
Eventually they grew tired of waiting and yesterday staged a protest outside the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry on Jalan Gatot Subroto, South Jakarta.
They also issued a complaint to the Lampung provincial government, which informed them that PT Shaymma was a bogus company. Its office in Bandar Lampung has been abandoned, and the firms president director Yusuf Hambali is nowhere to be found.
The womens plight has been taken up by the Legal Aid Team for Indonesians Working Abroad. A member of the team, Wahyu Suliso, said PT Shaymma and PT Suma Jaya had clearly been in cahoots to dupe the women.
Although PT Suma Jaya is a legal company, the women are having difficulty getting any money out of it, because it claims their registration fees are with PT Shaymma.
Suliso said the dormitory at Jalan Kramat Aris, No. 48, does not belong to PT Suma Jaya. The company had merely been renting it and the rent expired this week, causing more problems for the women.
The gypped workers urged the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry to force PT Suma Jaya to return the money they had paid and to compensate them for the three wasted months they spent in the dormitory.
Many Indonesian women are lured to jobs abroad by the promise of high wages. But there are pitfalls at every corner. Not only may recruitment firms here try to rip them off, local civil servants may also attempt to extort them.
And once they are abroad, they may be subjected to excessive hours of work, poor treatment, beatings, rape and even execution. Upon returning home, some female Indonesian workers are ripped off by unscrupulous airport officials.