Markus Junianto Sihaloho – Migrant worker rights activists have reiterated a call for the closure of the notorious Selapajang Terminal at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, citing its long history of alleged discrimination and extortion of returning migrant workers.
Anis Hidayah, executive director of the group Migrant Care, said on Friday that her organization had for years fielded complaints about the terminal, which handles migrant workers returning from overseas and provides onward transportation for their journeys home.
"In 2006, the UN special rapporteur on migrant worker rights recommended to the government that the migrant worker terminal be closed down," she said. "Besides the discriminative practices, the terminal fails to serve the workers by consistently providing them with expensive and unsafe onward transportation."
Anis said calls to improve services at the terminal or re-evaluate its function had been largely ignored by the authorities, who she accused of wanting to maintain the facility for their own interests. "That's because the migrant worker terminal is profitable for them," she said.
Place of deception
Known as Terminal 3 when it opened in 1999 (that name now refers to the new terminal opened in 2009 to serve budget airlines), the migrant worker terminal has long been beset by allegations of extortion, mistreatment and even sexual abuse of returning workers by terminal officials.
Workers have frequently complained about paying exorbitant rates for transportation home because they are not allowed to be picked up by family or friends.
Public minivan drivers at the terminal have even been accused of robbing their passengers, who are often carrying months' worth of wages, and leaving them stranded by the side of the road.
In a report to the UN's Committee Against Torture in April 2008, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) raised concerns "with regard to transit centers for Indonesian migrant workers – the majority of whom are women – who are on their way out of the country as well as those who are on their way back to their hometowns."
"Terminal 3 is intended as a protection effort for migrant workers, but in practice, it is a place of deception, exploitation, robbery and other forms of abuse against Indonesian migrant workers," the commission said.
The terminal was also cited in a submission that same month by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council.
"The commission observed that these workers, especially women workers, are often ill-treated during departure, transit, [in the] workplace and [upon] return," Komnas HAM said.
"The commission underlined the call of migrant workers for the government to close [Selapajang Terminal] since many acts of enforced payment, ill-treatment, fraud and sexual harassment occurred in this terminal."
Who's in charge?
Jumhur Hidayat, head of the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI), acknowledges the problems at the terminal and backs the call to close it, but says his agency is powerless to do anything about it.
Testifying on Thursday before the House of Representatives' Commission IX, which oversees labor affairs, he said the terminal fell under the purview of the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry.
"The terminal was established based on ministerial policy, so there's no way we can change that," he said.
The legislators, though, insisted that the BNP2TKI should do more to tackle the extortion scams and other abuses that the workers were subjected to by officials at the terminal.
Anshori Siregar, from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), called on the agency to carry out surprise inspections to get a clear picture of what was going on there.
"Who's in charge there and what are they doing? How can there be claims that the quality of service there is good when there are so many complaints? We need to address this issue together," he said.
Rieke Dyah Pitaloka, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said complaints about the terminal ranged from exorbitant transportation fees and foreign currency exchange rates, to abusive treatment by the officials.
She also questioned the authorities' decision to prohibit public access to the terminal, implemented ostensibly to prevent con artists and other criminals from extorting or defrauding the workers.
"Has it worked in keeping the criminal element at bay? We shouldn't be fighting criminals by segregating the migrant workers from the general public," she said.
Vested interest
Thursday's hearing came amid allegations that a member of Jumhur's family was behind the mark-ups at the terminal.
Posts from the Twitter account @korbanbnp2tki claimed that the person, identified only as Agung, took a 50 percent cut of all the revenue from the transportation, food, phone voucher, money-changer and other concessions there, making "billions of rupiah" a month.
Jumhur called the allegation "trash." "If I really had a vested interest in the running of the terminal, I certainly wouldn't want it to be closed," he argued.
Still, legislators were unimpressed with his office's oversight of the terminal.
Poempida Hidayatulloh, a Commission IX legislator from the Golkar Party, said on Friday that there needed to be a serious and concerted effort to address the problems at the terminal.
"The BNP2TKI must respond by improving the quality of services for migrant workers at that terminal," he said. "If indeed there's something wrong with the terminal, then it figures because the BNP2TKI just isn't doing its job of supervising it very well."
Poempida also said that the monitoring must be sustained, and [not] dropped as soon as public scrutiny of the issue had waned.
"It's important that monitoring of operations at the terminal is carried out constantly," he said. "But don't let that lead to abuse of power on the part of the officials doing the monitoring," he added.