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fter five months, the moratorium on labor export has taken effect in Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom’s Human Resources Minister Adel Muhammad Fakieh made a special visit to Jakarta on Tuesday to repair the two countries’ bilateral ties regarding labor issues.

Indonesian Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar and his Saudi Arabian counterpart declined to explain in detail the impact of the moratorium policy between the two countries, but stressed that both sides were committed to improving protection for Indonesian migrant workers employed as domestic helpers in Saudi Arabia.

Indonesia, which has annually supplied around 30,000 migrant workers to Saudi Arabia over the past decade, has suspended labor exports since June 2011, after discovering the absence of improved protection for migrant workers over the past four decades.

Data at nongovernmental organization Migrant Care, providing advocacy for migrant workers, has shown that dozens of Indonesian workers have died each year due to labor abuse, violence and criminalization. Scores of others have been annually unpaid, sexually harassed and dismissed, while hundreds of others have been deported for overstaying their visas. Last week the government bought home more than 1,200 migrant workers who overstayed in Saudi Arabia.

Ruyati from Bekasi, West Java, was executed on June 18, 2011, for killing her employer while Tuti Tursilawati, another worker from Majalengka, is awaiting her execution for a similar case. Dozens of others are facing death row for various crimes in that country.

The government has deployed a task force, including two qualified lawyers, to help troubled workers, including 215 migrant workers facing death row in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and China.

The Philippines, another country supplying migrant workers abroad, has blacklisted 41 countries providing no standard protection for its workers.  

Muhaimin stressed that Indonesia would lift the moratorium after Saudi Arabia made necessary repairs to the protection system for foreign migrant workers.

“This meeting [with my Saudi Arabian counterpart] is good momentum for the two countries to repair labor cooperation, especially the protection system for migrant workers. The moratorium is lifted,” he said after the meeting.

He said that during the meeting he had asked the Saudi Arabian royal government to implement the letter of intent on migrant worker protection, which was signed on May 28, 2011. “Indonesia will improve the skills of migrant workers sent to Saudi Arabia and both sides agree to improve the professionalism of Indonesian labor exporters and their Saudi Arabian partners to help protect migrant workers,” he added.

Adel was scheduled to pay a courtesy call to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Tuesday evening.