The majority of divorce applications were initiated by the women who work as migrant workers.
ong-distance marriage is believed to have led to high divorce rates in Blitar, East Java, as recent data suggests that separation mostly affects women who work as migrant workers and their unemployed husbands.
The Blitar Religious Court in East Java had received nearly 2,000 divorce applications this year alone as of April, most of which were filed by women.
According to the court’s spokesperson M Fadli, of the total 1,839 cases filed, 1,309 were filed by the wives, while the remaining were filed by the husbands. Of the cases filed by the wives, 756 had been ruled on.
“Thus we still have 553 cases left,” Fadli told reporters recently.
The data also suggests that 75 percent of the women who filed for divorce this year had worked as migrant workers. Most of the remaining cases also involved couples who work overseas.
“So the problems were actually similar. The wives work as migrant workers while the husbands were unemployed. This trend has led to the increasing divorce rate,” Fadli said.
Fadli explained that the separation usually began as the husbands failed to financially support the family, encouraging the women to work overseas as migrant workers while the husbands remain unemployed. Depending on the destination country, a migrant worker may earn much more money compared to what a blue-collar worker can make in the country.
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