Hera Diani, Blitar (East Java) – In late June and early July, before the new school year begins, commercials for schools begin popping up on the radio. The advertisements follow a predictable pattern, with one student typically persuading another to register at a particular school.
In the small East Java town of Blitar, some 170 kilometers southeast of Surabaya, these kinds of ads run all year long. But instead of schools, job recruitment agencies dominate the airwaves, with ads targeting teenagers looking for work in foreign countries.
"Wow, she's so well off after working abroad. I want to be like her!" says a voice on the radio.
Booming business
Blitar sends more workers overseas than any other district in East Java, with 5,384 people leaving the city to work abroad in 2007, 3,705 in 2008 and 947 as of May this year, out of a population of about 1.2 million. These people are looking for better income, which sadly cannot be found at home, where jobs are limited, particularly for women.
The local economy is stagnant, except for handicrafts, small-scale farming and tourism – founding President Sukarno was born and buried in Blitar.
In this low-growth environment, however, skilled labor has become a valuable commodity. Migrant workers sent back Rp 119.1 billion ($11.8 million) in remittances to Blitar in 2007 and Rp 76.02 billion in 2008. By May of this year, overseas remittances to Blitar reached Rp 89.97 billion, according to the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration.
"Migrant workers move the economy here," said Hadin Arif, who returned to open two grocery stores in Blitar after working in a factory in Seoul, South Korea. "In addition to remittances, they also open shops and businesses, creating jobs for locals."
Success stories like Hadin's are encouraging more people in Blitar to work abroad. The "tradition" is even passed on by parents whose children also become migrant workers. However, instead of a better life, many of them end up in a menacing maze of debt, blackmail and abuse that can even lead to death.
There have been many reports of abuse, suicide and missing people in the Blitar area over the years. One of the more recent cases is Sumasri, 45, who returned home from Malaysia in mid-May with severe physical and emotional scars. Her employer allegedly poured boiling water on her and refused to pay her for two years. Sumasri's family and local aid workers say she has fallen into a deep depression.
Exploited workers
Poorly educated workers are vulnerable to exploitation, due to the high demand for cheap labor. Middlemen working for legal and illegal recruitment agencies attract potential workers by offering gifts such as television sets and cash loans.
Mawana, 60, is one such intermediary, recruiting about 10 workers per year. She said that she earns between Rp 2 million and Rp 2.5 million for each candidate she recruits.
"I deal with a person at an agency in Jakarta who knew me when I worked in Saudi Arabia back in the early 1990s," said Mawana, whose daughter works in Taiwan. "The agency keeps changing its name, but the person is still the same."
There are a number of different recruiting scams, said Suryo Sumpeno, legal coordinator for the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (SBMI). Suryo is based in nearby Malang, where Blitar migrant workers must go to process their immigration documents.
"Anybody can become a middleman, from housewives to language teachers to police officers," Suryo said. "Recruitment agencies really depend on these people because they can reach potential workers in villages and remote areas. Sometimes the middlemen even force people to work overseas by threatening them, or persuade them with incentives such as television sets and motorcycles."
Local governments remain largely clueless about how many workers are actually being sent abroad by recruitment agencies.
"The Manpower Ministry asks district offices to accumulate data on migrant workers from village heads," Suryo said. "But village heads can't keep tabs on every villager, so the official data isn't always accurate."
Fresh recruits are often brought to walled compounds owned by the agencies, where they supposedly take language classes and training courses related to their jobs for about three months. Few agencies actually provide any real training, however, and most just hold the candidates, sometimes for weeks, until jobs open up in foreign markets.
Highly rated agencies such as PT ASA Jaya have good facilities, language resources, kitchens and rooms for workers to practice skills such as cooking, washing, baby-sitting and care-giving.
Other agencies, such as PT AAD Pratama Karya, are less reputable. AAD Pratama Karya's offices are in an old school, with one classroom containing bunk beds for workers. In the afternoon, the workers often have little to do, because there are no training facilities.
"Most of the workers are kept here for three to four months," AAD Pratama Karya director Siti Mutiin said. "If it's longer than that, we send them home while we look for work for them. We send about 40 people abroad every month."
Many illegal agencies use phony businesses such as car showrooms as fronts. At these operations, people are often simply locked up while waiting for overseas jobs to pop up. Labor activists say many workers at these shady agencies are vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment.
These kinds of agencies start breaking the law during the recruitment phase, by falsifying immigration documents for underage workers. In Indonesia, you must be at least 18 years old to go to Malaysia and the Middle East, and 21 for other countries. The maximum age is 35. Workers are given aliases, fake identification, phony language qualifications and bogus medical test results.
"It's mafia work, really," Suryo said. "And many government offices conspire with them, from manpower to immigration."
Siti Masrurah, 25, passed through Surabaya to illegally work at a plywood factory in Malaysia in 1999. She was only 15 and had little choice, because her family was too poor to send her to school.
"First we went to Tulungagung, then Surabaya," said Masrurah, who now works as a seamstress in Ngandengan, a village just outside of Blitar. "From Surabaya, we went by boat to Nunukan in Kalimantan for four nights, and then another one-day boat trip to Tawaw, at the Malaysian border."
Former migrant worker Aangvina, 44, said that she passed through Banyumas in Central Java, then on to Jakarta and Batam before heading to her first destination country. She worked in Malaysia, Brunei, Hong Kong and Taiwan before her family insisted that she return to Blitar because of the abuse she had suffered.
Migrant workers need to pay for insurance and certain documents, but the amounts vary. If they don't have any money, the middlemen or the agencies pay up-front and the money is then deducted from the workers' paychecks while they work overseas.
"But in some cases, the parents and families have to pay," Aangvina said. "A neighbor once fainted when a middleman asked her to pay Rp 8 million for her daughter's flight and other expenses before she went to work."
The abuse suffered by untrained workers placed in unfamiliar foreign environments has been well documented, but the lasting emotional problems that migrants face when they return home are less well known.
"Many migrant workers face culture shock and spend their money on unimportant stuff," said Hadin, the former Seoul factory worker, adding that migrant workers should take courses in financial management. "When their money runs out, they have to go overseas again."