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Groups demand language-skill requirement
Employers and labor organizations are urging the government to include an Indonesian language requirement in job certification to prepare for increased regional labor competition in 2015
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mployers and labor organizations are urging the government to include an Indonesian language requirement in job certification to prepare for increased regional labor competition in 2015.
Under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which is scheduled to officially kick off in 2015, member countries ' Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam ' are slated to gradually lift restrictions on labor movement within the region.
Indonesian Workers Organization (OPSI) secretary-general Timboel Siregar said that such a language requirement was necessary to help increase the competitiveness of Indonesian workers over workers from other ASEAN countries.
'Our workers obviously have hard skills. However, since the majority of them lack education, they don't have important soft skills like work ethics that would help them compete with expatriates,' he said on Tuesday on the sidelines of a seminar on the labor market in the AEC.
Echoing Timboel, Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) deputy chairman Franky Sibarani said an association of media houses, for example, needed to include such a requirement in its certification program for foreign journalists seeking to work in Indonesia.
'It's because they have to conduct interviews in the language to accommodate the majority of their sources,' he said.
Manpower and Transmigration Ministry labor placement and advisory director general Reyna Usman said the majority of Indonesia's workforce were elementary school graduates and were not ready to enter a free job market.
'Uneducated workers need vocational training from their respective companies [...] Unfortunately, not many companies provide that as setting up the centers can be costly,' she said.
Franky said poor education at home had resulted in Indonesian workers being sent to neighboring countries to work mostly as domestic workers.
'Meanwhile, a lot of workers from other ASEAN countries, like the Philippines, come to Indonesia to occupy important positions, for instance, financial department heads,' he said. (ogi)
