While it took far too long to reach the deal, leaving our country’s migrant workers in Malaysia without sufficient legal protections in the interim, we welcome this important agreement between the two close neighbors.

The Foreign Ministry has said that Indonesia’s “national interests have been accommodated, especially in regard to protections and rights for migrant workers”, in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) the two countries signed on Friday.

It is a great relief that one of the contentious issues that prolonged the negotiations – Malaysia’s Maid Online direct hiring platform – has been resolved. The platform had allowed migrant workers to enter Malaysia on a 14-day tourist visa and then convert it to a work visa after their arrival, circumventing a number of legal requirements.

The first incarnation of the labor agreement was signed in Bali in 2006 and amended in 2011, before expiring in 2016. Until Friday, the two ASEAN members had been been either unable or unwilling to renew the agreement.

Observers have noted that labor migration governance in the two countries has typically been focused on the management of cross-border movement and the deployment of migrant workers, rather than the protection of their rights or welfare.

In doing so, the two governments have “outsourced” labor migration management to the market.

In a system that favors of employers, recruiters and policymakers, Indonesian migrant workers have found themselves highly vulnerable to labor abuses, including versions of modern slavery. Many have faced low and unpaid wages, hefty recruitment charges and a lack of critical protections, all of which should have been resolved at a regulatory level.

Despite the danger, more than 2.7 million Indonesians, often with little education and limited marketable skills, have risked their lives for jobs in Malaysia, where many are undocumented, for the promise of better pay.

Over the past few years, more undocumented Indonesian workers have become victims of unsafe migration channels and human trafficking. Dozens have drowned or gone missing at sea on their way to Malaysia.

Just two weeks ago, two Indonesians died and dozens were rescued after a wooden boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of North Sumatra. The passengers had taken a dire gamble, motivated by desperation for income unavailable at home and tempted by the loose entry requirements and legal procedures of the route.

Now that Indonesia’s proposed One Channel System has been accepted, authorities on both sides can coordinate and better monitor the conditions of migrant workers. We hope and expect that these workers will no longer encounter life-threatening perils in their struggle to feed their families.

We hope, too, that the new agreement will provide legal certainty to Malaysian employers, while protecting hundreds of thousands of Indonesian migrant workers under the law.

We call on both governments to implement these new measures immediately and enforce them effectively for the safety and well-being of our fellow workers.

The new deal took years to sign. We cannot afford for its implementation to take that long as well.