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resident Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Friday that his decision to stop sending migrant workers to Saudi Arabia was not an emotional one.

He said he had calculated and anticipated the impact.

“I am not the type of person who makes emotional decisions. I had to be rational and think about [all the consequences] of the moratorium,” he told a Cabinet meeting on Friday.

Yudhoyono said the moratorium would force the government to provide more jobs at home since the country’s unemployment rate was still at 6.9 percent.

“For the future, we want the number of Indonesian people working as housemaids [abroad] to continue to shrink. They could work in foreign countries, but not as housemaids,” he said.

The moratorium on Indonesian migrant workers going to Saudi Arabia is slated to take effect on Aug. 1.

The decision came following the beheading of Indonesian maid Ruyati binti Satubi by the Saudi
government last week.

According to Yudhoyono, the government’s Master Plan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesian Economic Growth (MP3EI) could be used to create more jobs at home once the moratorium took effect.

Through the master plan, the government targets Rp 4,000 trillion (US$468 billion) in new investments from 2011 to 2025.

Disadvantaged Regions Minister Ahmad Helmy Faisal Zaini said he would create a program to create jobs in disadvantaged regions by making use of idle land.

There are currently about 1.5 million Indonesians working in Saudi Arabia, most as housemaids.

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said the government had implemented a “soft moratorium” as of early this year.

With the soft moratorium, employers from Saudi Arabia seeking maids from Indonesia had to show a letter of good conduct, minimum wage, home address and family photos.

Muhaimin said since the soft moratorium, job requests from Saudi Arabia had decreased significantly.

The government also plans to set up a new presidential task force to help migrant workers facing the death penalty abroad.

Migrant Care executive director Anis Hidayah said the establishment of a task force implied that ministers were performing poorly, including Muhaimin and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.

In Medan, North Sumatra, Law and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar said the government was preparing a legal attaché at Indonesian embassies in countries receiving migrant workers from Indonesia.

He said it was the obligation of the government to defend their citizens facing the death penalty. Many foreign governments had asked the Indonesian government to give clemency to convicts on death row in Indonesia, he said.

“Many countries plead for clemency but we cannot grant them that, the law must be upheld,” Patrialis said.

Indonesian Employers Association national board chair Sofjan Wanandi said Friday that the government should stop sending housemaids to Saudi Arabia forever.

“The culture there regards women as slaves,” he said. “It should have not been a mere moratorium but a termination.”

He said while the moratorium was in effect the government must make an effort to better protect workers by punishing labor exporters that violate the law.

Sofjan, however, said he did not object to sending housemaids to Malaysia. “Indonesia and Malaysia have similar cultures.”

He said it was better for the government to provide employment by boosting investment in the country. One way to attract investment was to pass the law on land because many investors found it hard to acquire land for businesses in Indonesia.

Several organizations in Indonesia have also called on the government and the House of Representatives to pass a law on domestic worker protections at home to make the jobs more attractive. Many domestic worker agencies have said that more women choose to go abroad rather than work as maids in Indonesia.

—Apriadi Gunawan and Arya Dipa contributed to this report from Medan and Bandung respectively