SP/Edi Hardum – Legislators have urged Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar to crack down on officials who extort illegal fees from migrant workers returning from overseas.

Arif Minardi, a member of House of Representatives Commission IX, which oversees labor affairs, said at a hearing with the minister on Monday that officials from the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI) were still forcing workers to pass through a separate terminal at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport where they were harassed and shaken down.

"I call on the minister to deal with thugs operating there," Arif said. "Officials from the BNP2TKI who are proven to be involved in this misconduct must be fired from the civil service."

Under a Manpower Ministry regulation issued in December, returning migrant workers are no longer required to pass through at Soekarno-Hatta's notorious Terminal IV, known as the Selapajang terminal. This followed numerous complaints about widespread extortion and harassment of the workers by officials and thugs allowed to loiter there.

But Arif said the regulation was being largely ignored and migrant workers were still being herded through Selapajang.

"That regulation remains pointless as long as officials and thugs are not disciplined," he told Muhaimin. "I'm still getting a lot of complaints about this problem."

In his response to legislators, however, Muhaimin insisted the Selapajang terminal was relatively safe for returning migrant workers, and said the job of cracking down on rogue BNP2TKI officials should be the responsibility of the agency chief, Jumhur Hidayat.

Anis Hidayah, executive director of nongovernmental organization Migrant Care, questioned the minister's rationale for issuing the regulation if he was unwilling to follow up on its provisions. She agreed with House Commission IX that Muhaimin needed to do more to enforce the terms of regulation.

"If he doesn't, then the public will get the impression that he only issued the regulation as a populist ploy," she said. "The way I see it, Muhaimin hasn't done anything concrete in relation to this."

Earlier this month, Reyna Usman, the Manpower Ministry's director general for migrant worker guidance and placement, said the ministry was in talks with other stakeholders about cracking down on the extortion taking place at the airport. " From this point on there won't be any more thugs operating," she claimed.