Newly inaugurated Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia Rusdi Kirana, owner of Indonesia’s largest low-cost carrier, Lion Air Group, plans to improve the skills of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia through education.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo inaugurated Rusdi, a political appointee who is also a member of the Presidential Advisory Board, along with four other ambassadors at the Presidential Palace on Thursday.

Problems pertaining to migrant workers are long-standing problems in relations with Malaysia, which hosts some 800,000 Indonesian workers.

Rusdi said he planned to establish community colleges in Malaysia to ensure migrant workers and their family members received adequate education and training.

“There are problems in Malaysia because we have a lot of citizens there. Through community colleges, we will ensure that them and their family members get an education,” Rusdi told reporters after the ceremony.

He added that the training centers were aimed at upgrading the skills of Indonesian migrant workers who planned to return home to ensure they used the skills back home to earn money, thus preventing them from returning to Malaysia.

“We have a projection that they will be able to open medium-sized businesses back home after they return so that they do not think to going back to Malaysia.”

To finance those medium-sized businesses, Rusdi said he had talked to state-owned lender Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) to act as creditor and his Lion Group would act as guarantor for returning migrant workers.

He said deported migrants would also be eligible for the training and financing program.

Rusdi said he would cooperate closely with local authorities in Malaysia to ensure Indonesian migrant workers, both legal and illegal, received maximum legal protection if they were implicated in any cases.

Indonesian migrant worker Siti Aisyah will face the death penalty in Malaysia if she is
convicted by a local court of involvement in a clandestine assassination plot to kill Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Rusdi said he had asked Jokowi to post him in Malaysia “because I want to take care of not only illegal Indonesian migrant workers but Indonesian women workers as well.”

In a move to improve bilateral cooperation, Rusdi plans to launch twin-city programs between Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta; Kinabalu and Bali; and Kinabalu and Manado.

Other envoys inaugurated by Jokowi were senior diplomats Ferry Adamhar as Indonesian ambassador to Greece, Arto Suryodipuro to India, Rina Soemarno to Bangladesh, Wieke Adiwoso to Slovakia and another political appointee, Ratlan Pardede to Tanzania.

Arto said he would step up efforts to boost trade between Indonesia and India, the largest buyer of Indonesian palm oil.

“In his visit to New Delhi in December, President Jokowi said we want to diversify our exports [to India],” Arto said.

Also on Thursday, Jokowi received letters of credential from five ambassadors: Pitchayaphant Charnbhumidol from Thailand, Jose Maria Matres Manso from Spain, Ambassador Fabian Valdivieso Egueguren from Ecuador, Masafumi Ishii from Japan, and Dave Chandalal Persad from Trinidad and Tobago, who is based in New Delhi.

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