Dessy Sagita – A leading activist criticized the government on Tuesday for failing to actively engage in efforts to save Indonesian migrant workers on death row overseas.

Migrant Care executive director Anis Hidayah said that instead of the government taking the lead, former vice president B.J. Habibie was the one lobbying the Saudi Arabian authorities to save a migrant worker threatened with imminent execution.

Migrant Care is a nongovernmental organization dealing with migrant workers' issues.

"I appreciate his good intentions, but it should not have been Mr. Habibie's responsibility. That is the responsibility of SBY as the president and not that of a former president," Anis said, referring to current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Habibie left for Riyadh at the weekend and has since obtained a promise from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to assist in efforts to save an Indonesian migrant worker on death row for allegedly killing her employer.

The migrant worker, Tuti, a single mother from Majalengka, West Java, with a six-year-old son, was sentenced to death for the murder last year of her employer, Suud Malhaq Al Utaibi, whom she claims sexually abused her.

Jumhur Hidayat, the head of the Indonesian Migrant Worker Placement and Protection Agency (BNP2TKI), has said that Habibie's involvement was proposed by a number of lawyers, public figures and the family.

Anis said that if Habibie managed to secure a pardon for the workers who are now sitting on death row, then the sitting president should be ashamed of himself because someone else did what he should have done.

Forty-four Indonesian migrant workers are on death row in Saudi Arabia, according to Migrant Care.

On Oct. 6, Yudhoyono sent a letter to the Saudi King Abdullah asking for his help in seeking forgiveness for Tuti from the victim's family.

Anis said that in his experience, the government should push for more high-level diplomacy to protect its migrant workers facing legal problems overseas. Other countries would be more serious in dealing with those cases if Indonesia could show that it was serious about protecting its citizens, she said.

"Just take the case of Vietnam. One of their maids was tortured in Malaysia and the Vietnamese foreign minister immediately went there to demand answers. The Malaysian prime minister finally went to Vietnam to apologize. How many Indonesian maids have been tortured?" she said.

Anis said that instead, whenever a case arose, the government tended to blame the migrant workers. "They immediately become the main target, blamed for entering the country illegally, falsifying documents and their ages, even though the ones at fault should be the ones arranging it all," she said.

Anis said the government should halt the involvement of the private sector in the recruitment and placement of migrant workers as many companies push the workers to falsify their documentation.

The private recruitment and placement agencies, known in Indonesia as PJTKIs, are motivated primarily by profit margins and usually fail to provide the proper training for the workers.