Vita A.D. Busyra, Jakarta – Migrant worker rights activists have cast doubt on vice presidential candidate Hatta Rajasa's proposed moratorium on sending unskilled Indonesian workers abroad, saying similar policies have been undertaken before to little effect.
"Indonesia has a long history of placing a moratorium on sending migrant workers to several countries, from Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, to Jordan and Kuwait, but no concrete actions have been made [by the government] to enforce the bans," Anis Hidayah, the executive director of Migrant Care, a nongovernmental organization, told the Jakarta Globe on Monday.
She said the prospect of earning more money abroad, combined with a lack of job opportunities at home would always ensure that a high number of unskilled Indonesians would try to go overseas for work.
With a moratorium in place, she said, these workers would be going illegally and thus would not be assured of the legal protection afforded to workers in their host country.
Anis said that rather than call for moratoriums on sending workers overseas, the government should boost the measures it already had in place to protect the workers. "But the idea of a moratorium is just more appealing to voters," she added.
She blasted the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for what she called its timid approach to beefing up migrant worker protection, accusing it of instead resorting to the politically expedient stop-gap measure of imposing moratoriums on a country-by-country basis.
Anis warned that if that policy was expanded to a blanket moratorium on sending unskilled workers abroad, it would result in a massive increase in the ranks of the unemployed at home.
"What's certain is that such a moratorium will never be effective because it's been proven from past cases that the chances of success are extremely small," she said.
Andrinof Chaniago, a political analyst from the University of Indonesia, agreed that Indonesia was far from ready to impose a moratorium on sending unskilled workers abroad, and attributed this largely to the lack of vocational and entrepreneurial training afforded to local communities to empower people and keep them from having to seek a living overseas.
"I'm not optimistic about the proposed moratorium," he said. "The most important action for now is to strengthen our protection of migrant workers, and at the same improve and monitor migrant worker placement agencies."
Andrinof said that in the long term, the government should endeavor to create more jobs for its citizens at home.
"We're still struggling to provide enough decent jobs for Indonesians. We're still focusing on how to deal with human rights and labor outsourcing issues," he said. "If we're still unable to provide sufficient employment or to empower small and medium entrepreneurs, how can the moratorium be executed with any chance of success?"