500,000 in Malaysia facing legal troubles

More than 500,000 of 2.2 million Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia are now facing legal problems, a minister says.

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said Sunday that most of them were undocumented.

“The Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur is now handling their problems, including providing them with legal and administrative assistance,” Muhaimin said during his Sunday visit to Pamekasan regency, East Java.

He admitted that many Indonesians in Pamekasan were poorly educated, with the average highest education attainment being no higher than elementary school.

“As a result, they don’t understand laws and regulations applied in Malaysia,” he said as quoted by Antara news agency.

Muhaimin also encouraged Indonesians wanting to work overseas to use official recruiters designated by the government.

Activists have condemned the government’s failure to protect migrant workers abroad, especially in Malaysia, with the latest revelation from the Foreign Ministry citing that as many as 177 workers in Malaysia were in prison.

Ledia Hanifa Amaliah, a member of House of Representatives’ Commission IX overseeing labor and health affairs told The Jakarta Post that she and her colleagues would soon revise the 2004 Migrant Workers Law.

She said there was a problem of duality in the law in terms of the government’s role in managing, placing and protecting such workers.

“We need to clearly define the main tasks and functions of the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, as well as those of the national agency for the placement and protection of overseas labor,” she added.

Ledia added that the government also had to reform the nationwide migrant workers recruitment system, in which many recruiters, mostly private agents, did not provide workers with appropriate training before sending them abroad, including educating them on laws and regulations applicable in countries where they would be working.

“I believe the government also needs to send more skilled and educated workers [overseas],” Ledia said. (tsy)