Edi Hardum & Farouk Arnaz, Jakarta – The recent arrest of an East Jakarta woman confirms the continued outflow of migrant workers from Indonesia to destinations abroad, despite the government-issued moratorium on sending such workers to several countries and evaluations that are supposedly in place.

The woman identified by the National Police as Nurhayati, or Nur Binti Komar, reportedly worked for Indonesian couple Iat Mansyur and Bungawati, who allegedly ran a syndicate responsible for the illegal shipment of thousands of Indonesian workers to the Middle East.

"Iat Mansyur was arrested in Malaysia. We have yet to nab Bungawati, though; she has also escaped to Malaysia," Sr. Comr. Agung Yudha, an official with the National Police's general crime division, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday. "We're still developing [investigations] into this syndicate because so many people have fallen victim to them."

He added that Nur had illegally shipped thousands of Indonesian migrant workers to the Middle East via Malaysia.

The government in December 2011 lifted the moratorium on sending Indonesian workers to its Southeast Asian neighbor but still retains the ban on the shipment of workers to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and Lebanon.

Not only are the destinations illegal, but workers sent by the syndicate are also deprived of proper documents, rendering them completely without protection, while typically lacking the skills needed for overseas employment.

Agung said Nur, arrested in Condet, East Jakarta on Nov. 5, will be charged under human trafficking laws and the migrant worker protection law. If found guilty, she may face between two and 15 years in prison.

News of law enforcement officers arresting a huge number of people caught while attempting to send Indonesian migrant workers overseas illegally, have continued to make local media headlines. These headlines include the shipment of children, without proper documents and lacking training, as well as those sent to the countries where the moratorium still applies.

In August, for example, the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Workers (BNP2TKI) foiled the attempt of 500 Indonesians trying enter Malaysia via Batam in Indonesia's Riau Islands province. They were found to have planned to work in Malaysia, although equipped only with passport and not the other necessary documents.

According to BNP2TKI chief Gatot Abdullah Mansyur it is difficult to monitor the flow of Indonesian migrant workers to Malaysia because of the visa-free policy adopted by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

In August, an officer with the East Nusa Tenggara Police reported his supervisor to the National Commission on Human Rights after the latter suspiciously halted an investigation into the planned shipment of 26 people from the province, also without proper documents for overseas employment.

'Highly complex'

Most recently, newly appointed Manpower Minister Muhammad Hanif Dhakiri found "inhumane" shelters crammed with workers to be dispatched abroad in two houses in Tebet, South Jakarta, during an impromptu inspection of activities of El Karim Makmur Sentosa, a supposedly legal migrant worker placement agency in the area.

On Saturday, Hanif said he had no immediate plan to lift the ban in place for the shipment of workers to the five Middle Eastern states.

He said he would do so only he was able to guarantee improved protection and service conditions for Indonesian workers in the five Middle Eastern countries and others, as well improve training and other programs aimed at enhancing the skills and quality of Indonesian migrant workers before they were dispatched to their work stations.

Hanif described the issues surrounding the management of Indonesian migrant workers as "highly complex," beginning from the recruitment process to their return home. "You can say that once they step out of their houses, they will encounter many problems," Hanif said.

In the recruitment process, many migrant worker placement agencies, also known as PJTKI, adopt a payment system under which employees who manage to recruit the most migrant worker candidates get highest salaries, Hanif said.

"Theoretically, this alone creates potentials for problems. It is things like this we want to make sure to cope with first before the moratorium can be lifted," he said.

Then there is the issue with the PJTKIs. As many as 520 of them are registered with the Manpower Ministry. But their legal status alone, judging by past experiences, is evidently not enough to guarantee that they do their activities – comprising of recruiting, training, sending and placing Indonesian workers in their overseas stations – according to regulations.

The minister added that he would evaluate all other PJTKIs registered with the ministry. "We will re-select [the placement agencies], and we will revoke the licenses of troubled ones," the minister said.

Critics have also questioned government agencies' promises to train migrant workers well before their overseas employments, as well as lax law enforcement that means illegal deliveries can continue running rampant, resulting in a large number of unregistered Indonesian migrant workers abroad and subsequently little to no protection for them.

Hanif said of the 6.2 million Indonesian workers abroad, 48 percent only completed elementary school, resulting in more than half of them working as house maids. The BNP2TKI said the workers sent home a total of $7.4 billion in remittances last year. It's not clear how many of those workers are illegal.

But in Malaysia alone, which hosts the largest number of Indonesian migrant workers, registered workers make up less than half of the population – 1.09 million, compared with 1.5 million unregistered workers.

Vulnerable

A recent report by international human rights group Walk Free Foundation, the "2014 Global Slavery Index," suggests that this situation makes many Indonesian migrant workers vulnerable to modern slavery.

The report ranks Indonesia as the eighth-largest country in terms of number of people living in modern slavery. It says brokers operating in Indonesia's rural areas are known to lure men and boys into forced labor on palm oil, rubber and tobacco plantations, including for overseas placement.

Many Indonesian women, meanwhile, have been trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation or as domestic workers; suffering from excessive working hours, deprivation of wages and a lack of health-care services.

Indonesian migrant workers, upon their return home, are also known to be easy prey for corrupt officers at points of entry, including the migrant workers' terminal at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the country's main gateway.

Members of the Corruption Eradication Commission (PKP) caught several officers at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport red-handed while extorting money from newly returning migrant workers some months ago.

Anis Hidayah, a prominent activist for the rights of Indonesian migrant workers, said the biggest flaw in the government's implementation of the moratorium and other programs related to the migrant workers' management was lack of evaluation.

"There has not been adequate monitoring [of the implementation], no approaches have been done to improve [the management]," said Anis, also executive director of the Jakarta-based non-governmental group Migrant Care. "The moratorium has been toothless."

She said that during the moratorium on sending workers to Malaysia between June 2009 and December 2011, there had been barely a halt in the shipment of Indonesians to the neighboring country.

It's the same with the implementation of the moratorium on the five Middle Eastern countries that has been in place since 2011, she added.

"This shows that the government has not been serious with the moratorium, that the implementation has been very weak," Anis said. "Now we can only await [the work] of the new government; whether they will do business as usual, will do better or even worse."

Vice President Jusuf Kalla, known for his brazen statements, said on Friday he wanted Indonesia to stop sending workers abroad at all five years from now, unless if they were skilled laborers.

"We want to end all of this [poor treatments of Indonesian workers abroad]... so five years from now, we have to stop sending them at all," Kalla said.

In order to allow for that to happen, he said, the government would create as many jobs as possible inside the country, especially in labor-intensive industries. "The agriculture sector will be crucial, too [to the plan]," Kalla said.

In the mean time, Hanif said he wanted to make sure all "naughty" placement agencies will be sanctioned according to existing regulations. Although Indonesia has harsh human trafficking and migrant workers' protection laws, enforcement has so far been deemed near-zero.

"I would not hesitate [sanctioning] naughty PJTKIs," Hanif said.

He emphasized that providing 200 hours of training and education as an example of what a PJTKI must do before sending any worker abroad.

President Joko Widodo, meanwhile, is expected to soon appoint the new chief of the BNP2TKI. Critics have questioned its overlapping functions with the manpower ministry, as well as its lack of achievements in Indonesia's migrant workers' management despite being specifically established for the purpose.

Golkar Party lawmaker Nusron Wahid is among those tipped to be the next BNP2TKI chief, which has drawn criticism from the Indonesian Migrant Workers Solidarity Forum, or FSPILN.

"We don't want the next BNPT2TKI chief to be a mere part of profit sharing among those in power; far from our ideal hope," FSPILN spokesman Imam Syafii said in a press statement.

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/indonesian-workers-mistreated-government-promises-help/