Government labor rift mended
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Fri, 07/27/2007 12:01 PM
Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry and the government-sanctioned National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Overseas Labor (BNP2TKI) on Thursday settled a dispute over labor exports.
The two agreed to enhance coordination to avoid future miscommunications and friction over who has authority to oversee labor exports.
Ministry secretary-general Harry Heriawan Saleh said the ministry would focus on making policies and regulations to enforce the 2004 Labor Placement and Protection Law, and relevant presidential instructions.
Acting secretary of the labor agency, Agus Din, said the body would continue its main task of executing presidential instructions and policies on overseas labor.
The dispute between the two institutions began when the agency recently liquidated an insurance consortium appointed by the ministry, set up a private committee to handle the sending of workers to South Korea and rented space to money changers in the special lounge for migrant workers at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, just outside Jakarta.
Harry said the ministry would improve coordination with the agency in seeking to facilitate the rapid and safe sending of migrant workers overseas.
Chairman of the Indonesian Labor Exporters Association, Husein Alaidrus, criticized both sides in the dispute for failing to focus on their main task of providing professional services for migrant workers.
""Workers and labor exporters do not care about the conflict; they just need better services,"" he said.
""Both institutions should start simplifying the complicated procedures and get rid of the red tapes imposed on workers and labor exporters.""
Wahyu Susilo of Migrant Care, which advocates for migrant workers, called on the labor agency to identify all the problems and hurdles to accelerating labor exports.
""The core problems are a corrupt bureaucracy and the poor skills of migrant workers. The new agency must be able to cope with these two main problems,"" he said.
