Ismira Lutfia, Indonesia – Countries that send and receive migrant workers are poorly lacking in protection policies, New-York based Human Rights Watch said in a report on Saturday.

HRW said in its report – released ahead of International Migrants' Day on Saturday – that governments of both sending and receiving countries should ensure their immigration and labor policies do not impose excessive penalties on migrant workers without proper documents. They should also reform their labor laws to guarantee more protection for workers.

In its 48-page report "Rights on the Line: Human Rights Watch Work on Abuses against Migrants in 2010," the group highlighted the abuse and exploitation suffered by Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia and Middle Eastern countries.

"We see the same type of abuse happen over and over again," Nisha Varia, the senior women's rights researcher for HRW, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday. She also said the lack of sanctions against abusive employers have caused cases to persist. The report said local authorities have been slow to investigate or prosecute abusers.

The case of Keni binti Carda – an Indonesian domestic worker who alleged she was burned with an iron by her Saudi Arabian employers in September 2008 – was only investigated following international pressure. The probe has also been subjected to undue delays.

"The list of abuses against migrant [workers] in 2010 is long and grim. Governments need to jumpstart the pace of reforms to avoid another year filled with abuses and injustices," Varia said.

The report also includes testimony from Saminem, an Indonesian maid who told HRW earlier this year in Kuala Lumpur of her exploitation by her employers.

"I was mistreated by my employers. I woke up at 5 a.m and went to sleep at 2 or 3 a.m. I never get a day off. I had no rest. The door was always locked. I could never go out, only when employers go out with me. I slept in the dining room. I never slept in a room ever," she said.

The rights group also called on governments to strengthen migrant protection in 2011 and to ratify the International Covenant on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families.

Varia said the government needs to improve the recruitment system, which has left job seekers mired in debt during their first years of working abroad.

She urged host countries to revise the labor laws and include a set of provisions that guarantee better protection of migrant workers' rights.

These include the rights to hold onto their passports, the freedom to change jobs without having to get permission from their current employers and setting up a call center manned with Bahasa-speaking people, so that migrant workers could easily phone in and ask for help.

"So they have a way to report if they are abused and they can get information where to go for help," she said, adding that governments of host countries should "send a strong message to their people that keeping a migrant worker's passport is unacceptable."