Jakarta – Scholars have criticized the lack of legal protection for Indonesian migrant workers, citing many loopholes in the law's implementation.

Atma Jaya University law professor Henny Wiludjeng said there had been a vacuum of legal protection for migrant workers since the enactment of Law No. 39/2004.

He said the previous law had provided better protection for workers overseas. "The implementation of the 2004 law is not optimal yet," Henny said. "And it may worsen the ongoing problems of migrant workers."

She said the law should have prohibited private labor exporters to meet directly with the workers.

Henny said this would prevent "sweet talks that could lead to deceptions". "Many of the labor exporters have merely searched for the workers and sent them abroad without proper legal documents and adequate skills."

Skill and language certification was imperative for all migrant workers, she said. "The law covers an obligation for workers to attend training before being qualified to be sent abroad," Henny said.

"But the high demand from other countries for our workers has resulted in limited training being conducted. Therefore, many of them are unable to speak in the native language of their destination counties and they arrive there unskilled. This has caused abuse because many employers have demanded the (level of service) provided by the (Indonesian) workers to be equal with the money they have spent to pay them," Henny said.

Indonesia's migrant workers contribute significantly to the country's economy through their remittances home. Central Bank data shows during the second quarter of 2007 the country gained US$1.5 billion from migrant workers, a 5.4 percent increase from the same period last year.

The revenue increase was in line with an increase in demand for migrant workers. But an increased demand for the workers was not balanced with appropriate legal protection from the government, a legal expert from Krisnadwipayana University, H.P. Rajagukguk, said.

Many Indonesian migrant workers have reported cases of abuse by their employers. Some workers were underpaid and often worked more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and were forced to leave their passports with their employers, Rajagukguk said.

"The valid labor protection law cannot provide proper protection yet for Indonesian workers abroad," he said. "As for every labor problem, it was the employer's country's law that was used to settle the problem, not the Indonesian law," he said.

But a director with the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Overseas Labor (BNP2TKI), Ramiany Sinaga, said more than 80 percent of migrant worker problems were domestic and started with the recruitment process.

Ramiany however said her agency had made efforts toward reducing the sector's problems. "In cooperation with the police, we have raided places considered shelters for illegal workers," she said.

"We've also provided the workers with documents complete with numbers and addresses to contact when they face troubles. But the documents are often seized by the labor agents, so the workers are clueless when they find themselves in trouble," she added.