Indonesia and Saudi Arabia have partnered up for a pilot project that aims to improve the process of sending migrant workers to the Middle East, which has in the past eschewed the protection of workers’ rights.

Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri met his Saudi counterpart Ahmed Sulaiman Al-Rajhi in Jakarta on Thursday to sign a joint statement on a pilot project dubbed the “One Channel System” for the limited placement of Indonesian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.

“For Indonesia, bilateral cooperation is not easy because we have experienced many problems involving our migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, such as [...] violence, sexual harassment, unpaid wages, exploitation and death threats,” Hanif said in a statement.

The One Channel System is a limited trial that involves sending a certain number of migrant workers to limited destinations that include major cities such as Jeddah, Medina and Riyadh, as well as Damam, Qobar and Dahran in the eastern regions of the Arabian peninsula.

In addition to that, only certain worker classes are to be trialed for the system: babysitters, family cooks and caretakers for the elderly, as well as family drivers, childcare workers and housekeepers.

Under the new system, which will be evaluated every three months, the recruitment and placement process is to be integrated into an online system that allows for the two governments to supervise and monitor.

The decision to launch this initiative brings the partners closer to a system of good governance, which is required for Indonesia to consider lifting a 3-year-old moratorium on the placement of migrant workers in the Middle East.

In 2015, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that Indonesia would stop sending new domestic workers to the Middle East after Saudi Arabia executed two Indonesian maids. The two countries have since been in talks to improve the placement system, with Riyadh lobbying repeatedly for the ban to be lifted.

On Thursday, the two countries also agreed to form a joint committee that will be in charge of supervising and evaluating the implementation of recruitment and placement procedures in the field, and establish a special call center for migrant workers.

The ministry’s director for migrant worker placement and protection, R. Soes Hindharno, said the work contract that the partners are formulating must be based on providing decent working standards for migrants, which include giving nine hours of daily break time and one day off every week, as well as adequate compensation for overtime and salary paid through banks.

”The migrant workers would no longer work with the kafalah [individual employers] system, but rather a sharikah system, or through a company that is appointed and answers to the government of Saudi Arabia,” Soes told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Hanif insisted the new system would not negate the existing ban to 19 Middle Eastern countries. He also said the workers would only be employed for certain expertise, as the government was moving away from sending domestic workers that do all household chores.

Separately, Al-Rajihi said the agreement was one that people in his country had long waited for.

“The latest agreement [can be the basis for resuming] the sending of 30,000 Indonesian workers to the informal sector [...] within the next six months as part of the trial phase, and may be opened on a larger scale in the subsequent period,” Al-Rajihi said optimistically.

However, Soes insisted there was no fixed commitment between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia on the number of workers that would depart under the new system.

“It depends on supply and demand; if we only have 10,000 workers, then we send 10,000 workers,” he said, adding that similar arrangements were under discussion with other countries.

Migrant CARE executive director Wahyu Susilo urged the government to continue improving the regulatory system. “The mandate of the 2017 Law was to improve the management of migrant workers. Without them, there will be no change and workers will remain victims,” he said.

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