T

he governments of Indonesia and Malaysia have opened an agency in Sabah to support sending Indonesian workers to jobs in East Malaysia.

The agency, Bagus Bersaudara Sdn. Bhd., was recently inaugurated by Supeno Sahid, Indonesia’s consul general in Tawau, who said that the agency was greatly needed to give workers legal protection and to improve their welfare.

The agency was launched by the governments to control and advocate for the thousands of Indonesians who work in Sabah.

The deputy chairman of Sabah’s Manpower Office, Khamis bin A.R. Madjid, said only 350,000 of 600,000 Indonesian workers in the province were registered.

Most of the Indonesians in Sabah worked on oil palm plantations in Tawau, Samporna, Lahad Dato and Sandakan, Khamis said.

Supeno said that the opening of the agency would help Indonesia and Malaysia supervise and control the movement of Indonesian migrant workers from their places of origin through a single gate.

This would be different from the previous system, when workers were recruited and controlled by
middlemen and touts who often worked indiscriminately and illegally without regard to work permits,
Supeno said.

Without any agency, Supeno said, it would be difficult for Indonesia and Malaysia to control the movement of Indonesian migrant workers in Sabah, which shares a land border with East Kalimantan, thereby causing problems ranging from passport confiscation, poor relationships with employers, social issues and unpaid wage disputes.

Supeno said that with the operation of the agency, the employment of Indonesian migrant workers would be realigned in stages, especially with regard to the extension of visa and work permits by the Indonesian consulates in Tawau and Kota Kinabalu.

“Hopefully such problems could be minimalized in stages, naturally,” Supeno said.

Meanwhile, Khamis urged Bagus Bersaudara to improve its performance so as to enable it to give better service to the workers with the ultimate aim of helping to improve their welfare.

Bagus Bersaudara chairman Yunus bin Yusuf said that the establishment of the agency was aimed to help improve bilateral relations between Indonesia and Malaysia.

In conjunction with the inauguration of the workers agency, 24 heads of villages from various regencies across Indonesia that supply a large number of workers were invited to visit 18 plantations where workers were employed.

The visit, according to Yunus, was intended to give adequate inputs to the village heads to decide whether to allow their residents to work in East Malaysia.

During the visit the village heads were able to learn about insurance and wages paid by employers to Indonesian workers.

Those joining the visit, which was sponsored by Bagus Bersaudara, came from Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara; Maumere Flores, East Nusa Tenggara; Endrekang, West Sulawesi and Pare-Pare, South Sulawesi.

Bagus Bersaudara is expected to handle migrant workers from other cities like Semarang, Central Java; Surabaya, East Java; and Nunukan , East Kalimantan.

 — Sukmaraga Sofyan