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Malang revokes recruiters' permits
The Malang regency administration has revoked the licenses of 10 field recruiters of Indonesian migrant workers, citing administrative violations
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he Malang regency administration has revoked the licenses of 10 field recruiters of Indonesian migrant workers, citing administrative violations.
The regency manpower and transmigration agency's Teddy Wiryawan said Thursday the recruiters' work methods breached existing laws and could result in illegal migrant workers going abroad or people being trafficked.
"We have numerous scalpers operating in Malang and claiming to be contracted by authorized field recruiters to recruit prospective migrant workers," Teddy said.
He added this was illegal because a prevailing bylaw required each recruiter to have their own license, issued by the manpower agency.
The licenses of the 10 recruiters, he added, had been revoked because after attaining the licenses, they then recruited scalpers to seek out prospective migrant workers in remote.
As authorized recruiters, Teddy said, they were not allowed to recruit by proxy.
He added some of the recruiters had also been fired by their migrant worker recruitment companies (PJTKIs), but were still sending candidate workers to other recruitment companies.
"Some even send workers overseas by themselves, without going through the official procedures," he said.
To recruit by proxy, the regency has installed its own migrant worker recruitment officials at subdistrict, district and regency level.
Teddy said this was expected to help provide the community with a yardstick, as well as control the issuance of documents needed by migrant workers to work abroad, which is currently handled by the private sector.
Teddy also said his office would not issue any licenses for field recruiters in 2010, pointing out the current 327 recruiters were already sufficient to cover the region.
Manpower agency head Djaka Ritamtama called on all migrant worker recruitment companies in the regency to report any dismissals of their field recruiters to his office.
"That way, we can follow up by invalidating their licenses," he said.
Imam Zuhdi, president of one of the companies, PT Iin Era Sejahtera, said his company had long been urging the regency administration to tighten its control over the operation of field recruiters, arguing they had the potential to sending migrant workers abroad illegally.
He added there were thousands of scalpers in Malang who claimed to work for authorized field recruiters, usually offering up the prospective workers to recruitment companies that paid the highest fee.
Malang regency sends the highest number of migrant workers abroad out of all the administrative regions in East Java.
At least 5,000 migrant workers from the regency are sent abroad from each year, 30 percent of whom choose Malaysia as their working destination.
Most are employed as domestic workers.
