Ignatius Stephen in Bandar Seri Begawan – Some 76,000 Indonesian workers, including those deported from Malaysia, have turned to Brunei to look for jobs as tailors, construction workers, drivers and cleaners, among others.
East Java is preparing to send these many skilled and unskilled workers to the sultanate this year, an Indonesian daily recently reported. It is not clear, however, if Brunei is ready to absorb such a large number of workers.
About a third of its population of 300,000 consists of immigrant workers and there is wariness about taking in more people during the current economic downturn which has affected the employment prospects for the locals.
Late in January, Malaysia suspended hiring Indonesians after workers from that country were involved in a series of ugly brawls. It also began deporting illegal immigrants from Indonesia and announced that it wanted to phase out Indonesian workers, especially in the industrial, plantation and construction sectors.
In Brunei, Indonesians are eyeing jobs as nurses, maids, shopkeepers, drivers, cleaners, painters and workers in the mining industry. There are up to 31,000 Indonesians currently working in Brunei, with 15 per cent of them employed in the formal sector and the remaining in the informal sector, according to Indonesian Ambassador to the sultanate Rahardjo Djojonegoro.
A training centre has been set up in East Java to prepare the Brunei-bound Indonesian workers, an official at the Indonesian Embassy in Brunei recently told the Borneo Bulletin. It is being run as a joint venture between a Bruneian and an Indonesian workers association called Pagyuban Tenaga Kerja Indonesia (PATKI).
The idea is to train the workers in the skills in demand and to orient them for Brunei's working environment. Although not the only training centre for overseas-bound Indonesian workers, it is the first to specifically train Brunei-bound workers. The vocational skills being provided there meet the working standards in Brunei, said Mr Rahardjo, who inspected some training centres last week.
"I will be able to sleep well after looking at this training. Conflicts between employers and workers will not take place if labour professionalism, like that displayed by the prospective Indonesian workers during this training, is maintained," he said.
PATKI head Hadianto said the East Java manpower office had received requests from Brunei for more than 1,100 workers, mostly skilled ones, between March and April. To meet the demand, the East Java manpower office had trained 330 people as tailors, construction workers, shopkeepers, drivers and cleaners, he said. At least 100 of these are students from vocational senior high schools, he added.
Some 51 workers, who participated in the training, left for Brunei last week to work as maids, tailors, shopkeepers and construction workers. Mr Rahardjo said he hoped more skilled Indonesian workers would head for Brunei.
He also said he hoped that they would acquire greater bargaining strength to compete with their counterparts from other Asian countries. Nearly 50,000 Malaysians and more than 20,000 Filipinos work in Brunei.