Muhaimin to meet Saudi ministers over domestic workers issue

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar is slated to meet his Saudi colleagues from the manpower and internal affairs ministries’ offices on Tuesday to ask the Saudi administration’s commitment in providing better security for Indonesia migrant workers.

“We are here to ask the Saudi administration to recognize our domestic workers so they could earn some respect," Muhaimin, who has visited the country since last week, said in a press release on Tuesday as quoted by tempointeraktif news portal.

Muhaimin had also been visited the tortured Indonesian maid, Sumiati, who is currently hospitalized due to the severe injuries caused by her employer.

Approximately a million of Indonesian domestic workers work in Arab Saudi to this date, making the country as the second on the list after neighboring country Malaysia, which is the home for more than two million Indonesian workers right now.

However, dozens of violation cases toward Indonesian workers had also been regularly reported from the Saudi Arabian. These reports then sparked controversy here especially between the rights activists who had long demanded the government to pay serious attention in providing better security package for Indonesian workers abroad.