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egional Representatives Council (DPD) member GKR Hemas has asked people to resist the temptation to head to Malaysia and Saudi Arabia as migrant workers (TKI) due to violence targeted at such workers in those two countries.

Hemas said the violence was because Indonesia did not yet have government-to-government agreements with both countries on migrant worker protection.

'€œAs a result, Indonesian workers continue to experience violence in the two countries,'€ Hemas said at a discussion forum on domestic workers in Yogyakarta on Thursday.

She said without such agreements, efforts to protect Indonesian workers in both countries could not be at the maximum.

Hemas said the DPD had also asked the Indonesian government not to send migrant workers to Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

She revealed during her visit to a region in East Kalimantan that bordered Malaysia, that she found many female workers that were employed as commercial sex workers.

She also learned that many underaged girls in Indramayu, West Java, were first forced to marry and then get divorced so they could be classified as adults and sent abroad as migrant workers.

Last week in Riyadh, Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar and Saudi Manpower Minister Adel M. Fakeih signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the protection of migrant workers that mostly work as domestic workers in the kingdom.

Muhaimin said migrants would have access to cell phones, days off, salaries paid via banking services and online access to a work contract.

However, advocacy groups doubted the agreement could replace the current discriminatory regulations in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Central Java General Elections Commission (KPUD) expects a high yield among Indonesian migrant workers working abroad for the April 4 election.

KPUD member Diana Ariyanti said the voting method was now more accessible, so migrant workers could cast their votes in the countries they were working.

Diana said the government had established an election committee in each country where Indonesian workers were working. The committee was placed in the embassies of the countries concerned and was also tasked with collecting data on eligible voters.

Acting head of the Central Java Population Agency, Wika Bintang, said 122,247 migrant workers from the province would cast their votes abroad.