Made Arya Kencana & Ismira Lutfia, Denpasar – Linda Gumelar, the minister for women's empowerment and child protection, on Monday called on the government to end the moratorium on sending migrant workers abroad to some countries.

She said the ban on sending domestic helpers to Malaysia, Jordan and Kuwait highlighted the government's inability to provide decent employment opportunities in their home country.

"If the demand [to work abroad] and the opportunities there are high, the ban will only encourage illegal placement," she said in a discussion with students and representatives from women's organizations in Denpasar.

Linda said that only 4,000 out of the four million Indonesian labor migrant workers ran into legal problems each year.

She added that 80 percent of migrant workers' problems started at home because of poor recruitment and training, including the forging of documents for underage job seekers.

She said the best way to tackle the issue was to amend the 2004 Law on the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Workers Abroad, which currently focuses more on placement rather than protection.

The amendment of the law is included in the House of Representatives' National Legislation Program (Prolegnas), but deliberation of the bill was stalled last year.

Linda said an example of the poor protection migrant workers received was the incomplete data kept at Indonesian offices in receiving countries. For many workers, their employer's post office box number is their only listed address.

The fact that they did not have employers' actual addresses on file made it very difficult for consulates and embassies to monitor the situation of domestic workers, she said.

"We must make sure their complete addresses are listed. The workers must also have access to telecommunications services," she said, adding that the government planned to send more skilled workers and vocational school graduates instead of unskilled laborers.

The government last month also launched the People's Enterprise Credit (KUR) scheme to provide job seekers with the initial capital to work abroad, she said. The program is designed to prevent workers from borrowing money for the recruitment process from loan sharks.

Meanwhile, Wahyu Susilo, a migrant worker policy analyst, told the Jakarta Globe that imposing a moratorium was never going to solve the problems faced by Indonesian migrant workers.

He said that the government could not stop people from seeking jobs abroad because employment was a basic human right.

"What the government should do is to negotiate better with destination countries so that we have a memorandum of understanding that includes better provisions on protection of migrant workers," Wahyu said.

He added that government responses to migrant workers' issues tended to be ad hoc and did not solve the underlying problems.

Wahyu said that the stalled amendment of the 2004 migrant workers abroad law showed the lawmakers' and government's reluctance to provide the migrant workers with better protection.

He said it was not appropriate to weigh up the positive experiences of migrant workers against the negative ones. "Even if it was only one or two sad stories, they still count as problematic since we are dealing with people's lives," he said.

Denpasar Mayor Ida Bagus Rai Dharmawijaya Mantra said that adequate training and the provision of capital were effective ways to prevent women from seeking jobs abroad. "But it is more important to be creative when faced with challenges," Ida Bagus said.