Dessy Sagita & Ismira Lutfia – The Indonesian government would prevent Indonesians from working illegally abroad if it provided them with alternative jobs here, the National Commission on Violence Against Women said on Friday.
The call comes after a 26-year-old Indonesian from East Java, identified only as WF, went to Malaysia illegally in February and was found abandoned in a park in Penang last week, allegedly tortured and raped by her Malaysian employers.
An Indonesian ban on sending migrant workers to Malaysia is still in force.
"The fact is that many of these women are breadwinners of their family, therefore even during the moratorium, many of these migrant workers prefer to enter Malaysia illegally," said Yuniyanti Chuzaifah, head of the Komnas Perempuan commission.
Yuniyanti said that if the workers entered a country illegally, it would be a lot harder for the government to provide them with protection. She said commission data showed that more than 2,700 Indonesian migrant workers were deported from Malaysia every month. She said deportation was a serious threat because workers were often left only at the countries' borders.
"If they were dropped off at a country's border, they could easily become subject of human trafficking, because many times those workers do not have enough money to go back to their hometown. In this vulnerable state, the women are also prone to sexual and physical abuse threat." Sri Nurherwati, another member of the commission, said the ban on sending migrant workers should pressure other countries to strengthen their workers' protection system.
"The moratorium gives us a bargaining power, but it has to be a temporary policy only because the government should not ban people from their right to seek work abroad," she said.
Yuniyanti said the government should only send Indonesians to countries which have workers' protection system already in place.
According to the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), Malaysia is the country with the biggest number of Indonesian workers, estimated at more than 1.2 million. The figure did not include those who enter the country illegally and without any document.
The commission also reported that at least 1,000 Indonesian workers face legal problems every year and 60 percent of the cases were about unpaid salaries.
Wahyu Susilo, a migrant worker analyst from the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (Infid), said the moratorium has been ineffective and has failed to stem the flow of migrant workers to Malaysia since only Indonesia implemented it.
He said the Malaysian government should also ban its citizens from hiring Indonesian domestic workers, before the two countries agree on a new memorandum of understanding on migrant workers.
"Without a ban from the Malaysian side, they would not deny entry to Indonesian workers and it would be business as usual, they will keep hiring them as domestic workers," he said.
Muchamad Cholily, chairman of the East Java chapter of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union, previously estimated that about 5,000 Indonesians still illegally enter Malaysia to work each month despite the ban.
Infid and Migrant Care, a non government group advocating migrant workers' rights, staged a rally on Thursday in front of the Malaysian Embassy to call on the Malaysian government to forbid its citizens from employing Indonesian domestic workers.
"But we will also write a formal letter [to the Malaysian government] and bring this issue up at the upcoming Asean Summit in October," Wahyu said.