Jakarta – Migrant Care, an NGO that focusing on the welfare of Indonesian workers abroad, says the government's initiative to provide migrant workers with cellular phones is an "irrelevant" response to a serious problem.

Anis Hidayah, Migrant Care Jakarta chief, said the government should instead enforce legal protections. "The President's idea to provide them with cellular phones is irrelevant. We need a legal protection package that will prevent them from being abused," Anis said on Wednesday as quoted by tempointeraktif.com news portal.

For a start, she said, the government should demand that the Saudi Arabian government and governments in other countries that employ Indonesian workers guarantee that workers have access to their phones. "I have found in many cases that workers' cell phones are kept by their employers," she said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono previously said he planned to provide every Indonesian worker abroad with a cell phone to communicate with their families in Indonesia regularly. The statement was made following the case of Sumiatai, the Indonesian maid in Saudi Arabia who allegedly suffered severe injuries at the hands of her employer.