Dewi Kurniawati – On a recent morning at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, about 100 women are sitting on the floor of the international departure terminal. They all share two features: Muslim jilbabs and anxious looks on their faces.
These women are migrant workers waiting nervously for their flights to the unknown. Wherever they go, even to the toilet, they do so in groups.
One solitary figure among them is Tawinih Binti Wanda Timur, from Indramayu, West Java. Although she looks young enough to be in her early 20s, her passport says she was born in May 1979.
Tawinih is leaving her three children and husband, who earns Rp 5,000 (50 cents) a day as a fisherman, to work as a domestic helper in Abu Dhabi. Her eyes sweep her surroundings restlessly. She doesn't know any of the other women in the group. "I just know they are fellow migrant workers," she says.
When asked if she worries about traveling thousands of miles away from Indonesia, she says firmly, "I've got Allah. Allah knows I am just a poor woman trying to make a living.
"Hopefully Allah will give me a nice employer," she adds, but her fingers belie her anxiety as they fuss with her salmon-colored jilbab. Tawinih normally doesn't cover her head but must now do so in order to work in the United Arab Emirates.
God is probably the best hope for Tawinih and many Indonesian migrant workers during their long journey. Their struggle to earn a living is hazardous. Their future is totally dependent on the mercy of their employers.
The numbers game
According to the National Board for the Placement and Protection of Indonesia Overseas Workers (BNP2TKI), since the 1970s between six million and eight million Indonesians have left home to become migrant workers. However, only 4.3 million were officially recorded.
In 2008, the board recorded that 748,825 people went abroad to work, but only 36 percent of them worked in formal sectors, such as factories or plantations. The remainder, like Tawinih, go to work in private homes.
"We don't know what kind of employer we'll get," Tawinih says. "There is no pride in being a migrant worker. As a domestic helper, we are considered dirty."
Yet she keeps going back. Today's flight will be her fourth trip to the Middle East to work as a domestic helper. She first worked in Qatar, and then twice in Saudi Arabia. While in Qatar, she ran away from an abusive employer after 10 days and was forced to seek refuge at an Indonesian Embassy shelter.
"Being a migrant worker means you have to be ready to be treated as if you are a commodity. You're going to be pushed around," Tawinih says. "I have to do this even though it is not the best option. There are no jobs in my village and I have to support my kids," she adds.
Tawinih has been promised a salary of Rp 1.7 million ($170) a month. She says her future employer in Abu Dhabi paid Rp 20 million to an agency there to acquire her. "I just have to fly there. Everything has been prepared by my agency here," she says.
A man from the agency has bought her ticket, filled out the immigration documentation and slipped the immigration officer a bribe, saying, "Thank you for keeping an eye on her."
The officer has turned a blind eye and allowed Tawinih to leave from the regular departure terminal, instead of the special terminal for migrant workers.
Tawinih is probably one of the lucky Indonesian migrant workers as she has always arrived in her destination country and found the work she was promised. Others are not so fortunate.
Wanti Binti Asman, 38, a migrant worker from Subang, West Java, has arrived back in Jakarta from Kuala Lumpur. "I had to spend $300 out of my own pocket to fly home," she says angrily.
She had been led to believe that her employer in Damascus, Syria, had already paid for a round-trip ticket from there to Jakarta.
"The agency in Damascus cheated on me," she says. "It's OK, as long as I get home safely, I am thankful to God."
She says her Syrian employer treated her kindly, gave her one day off a week, and that she plans to go back to her job as a domestic helper. "I've got friends who have bad employers – they are all abused and beaten. So, I am better off," Wanti says.
Broken promises
The Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration says that more than half of all Indonesian domestic helpers working overseas have only a primary school education and that they frequently run into trouble.
Although migrant workers have struggled with problems for decades, the central government seems clueless as to how to tackle the issues. Indeed, various government ministries and agencies spend most of their time trying to shirk responsibility.
While they play the blame game, horrific stories arise on a daily basis, such as the case of six Indonesian women who in December 2008 were trafficked as sex workers in Kuala Lumpur.
The women, ranging from 19 to 23 years old and from different regions of the country, were lured by local agents to work in a restaurant and promised monthly salaries of 800 Malaysian ringgit ($225). Sadly, none of the women ever got to wait on tables or wash dishes.
"We never even saw the sun. We were kept in a guarded house for two weeks and forced to work as prostitutes until the police stormed in and freed us," says 19-year-old "Shinta," from Subang, West Java.
She and the other five women are now staying at a safe house in East Jakarta run by the Ministry of Social Affairs.
"We are all devastated," one tells the Jakarta Globe. "When I left Indonesia, I had a dream of bringing back a lot of money for my parents and of building a house for them. But I can't fulfill that dream now," Shinta says. "My parents don't even know what has happened to me. I don't want to make them sad. I'll tell them the whole story after I come home."
After being freed by the Malaysian police, the women were forced to stay in a safe house in Kuala Lumpur for six months and testify as witnesses in a trial against their former pimp.
"We were all interrogated for three to four hours a day by the police. We had to go back and forth for the trials. The whole process was so exhausting," says "Yulia," another of the victims.
The Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur didn't send a single representative to assist the women during the six-month process. After the trials were over, they stayed at an embassy shelter in Kuala Lumpur for two weeks while waiting to leave the country.
Although they are now back in Indonesia, they're still enduring a long process of health check-ups and educational training by the Social Affairs Ministry to prepare them for life after their ordeal, as well as the possible trial of the local agents who sold them to the agency in Malaysia.
"We don't care about justice anymore," the women say, angrily requesting that the next victim to arrive at the shelter should also go through the legal process. "We all just want to go home."