Elly Anita: (Courtesy of Migrant Care)

Like many people who are reaching maturity, Elly Anita thought about finding a proper job when she turned 16 back in 1997. But, she lived in a country where the unemployment rate was quite high and competition to get a job was very stiff.

“There are people with high education who cannot get job. As a person who has only elementary school education, I have to think hard how to get job. Like others, I decided to go overseas and became a migrant worker,” Elly told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Hailing from the East Java’s town of Jember, Elly recalled how she and her childhood friends were excited when they joined the recruitment process and followed the training organized by a recruitment agency. After going through all the processes, she began another chapter of her life becoming a migrant worker.

Her expectation to get high pay was fulfilled, although very often she encountered unexpected physical and sexual abuse from her employers.     

In 1997, she landed in Malaysia to take her first job as a baby sitter. Staying there for two years, she described her first experience as “quite good”. Then, she returned home for two months before moving to Hong Kong.

In this new country, Elly was employed as an assistant to a hairstylist at a beauty salon. Based on the contract, she had to work there for two years. But, after nine months, she decided to quit the job – breaking the work contract.

“I quit the job because I was underpaid and my employer did not give me holidays,” she said.

With the help of Christian Action Domestic Helper, a nongovernmental organization which helps workers, Elly filed a lawsuit against her employer on charge of underpayment. She won the case and got HK$30,000.

Following the trial, she went home. But, she could not spend time with her family as she had an obligation to take care of old women at PT Rajasa Intama in Tangerang, a company which recruits women and sends them abroad to become migrant workers.

After working at the agency for nine months, she got another chance to work in Hong Kong. This time, on the contract, she had to take care of kids – taking them to school and back home. In reality, however, she had to take care of an old woman, which she described as having a mental illness.

She quit the job, went home and after waiting for months, took another job as a waitress at a coffee shop in Bahrain.

During the course of her career as a migrant worker, Elly dealt with different people and different recruitment agencies known from their Indonesian abbreviation as PJTKI. “I have worked with different agencies. They all have one similarity, which is: they all do not give protection to workers,” she said.

Her next experience in the following years brought Elly to a more depressing situation. By the end of 2006, she was flown to Dubai to become a secretary at a private company. “Frankly, the job was good in Dubai. But, my employer often tried to touch me and to abuse me,” she said.

After complaining about the abuse, Elly said her boss threatened to send her home without payment or to move her to another country. After two months, her employer told her that she would be moved to Italy. But, it turned out that she was moved to Kurdistan in Iraq, not Italy. In Iraq, Elly worked with a family for 10 months. In this period, she felt sick. She got her payment cut by half to finance her medical treatment.

“In Iraq, my employer was good. But, the conditions were terrifying. I often heard bomb explosions and gun shots. When I managed to contact the Indonesian consulate, the people on the phone laughed at me,” she said.

Eventually, Elly met people from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who helped her to go home after having her passport and documents returned by Bruska Co., the company that managed her employment in Iraq.

Now, Elly is a staff member at Migrant Care – the Indonesian Association of Migrant Workers Sovereignty in Jakarta.

She said, however, that becoming a migrant worker is still a choice in a country where high unemployment is high. “At the same time, the government must play a role in the protection of migrant workers,” she added.

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