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Indonesia lifts ban on sending domestic workers to Middle East
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he government has lifted a moratorium on sending Indonesian citizens to the Middle East as domestic workers but has cautioned that people who take up offers of employment in the region must follow the proper procedures to ensure they are fully protected.
The decision is intended to “improve the governance and protection of Indonesian migrant workers in the Middle East”, according to Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah, who announced the policy change on Wednesday.
In 2015, Indonesia made it illegal for migrant workers to be sent to any of 19 Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, to work for individual employers, citing abuses that workers had encountered there.
A number of Middle Eastern countries have been criticized for their poor treatment of migrant workers under the kafala sponsorship system, which requires migrant workers to have an in-country sponsor, usually their employer, take responsibility for their visas and legal status. This means employers control their workers’ mobility – including their entry into the country, renewal of stay, termination of employment and transfer of employment – powers that the International Labor Organization has warned are prone to exploitation to create conditions of forced labor.
Later in the week, minster Ida flew to Saudi Arabia for a working visit. There, she met a group of troubled Indonesian migrant workers who were staying at a shelter provided by the Indonesian Consulate General in Jeddah.
Ida told the workers that while everyone had a right to work that the government must respect, those who wished to work abroad had to follow proper procedures so that the government could protect them from their departure until their return to Indonesia, according to a statement from the ministry.
In 2018, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia agreed to use the One Channel System (SPSK), which stipulates that Indonesians seeking work in the country must go through an approved syarikah (Saudi Arabian migrant worker placement company). The scheme allows Indonesia to send a limited number of workers to Saudi Arabia, bypassing the 2015 moratorium.
“Those who want to work in Saudi Arabia must go through the syarikah and should ensure that the kafil [sponsor] is not an individual but a company. This is so that the government can help protect migrant workers.
There are about 351,000 Indonesian migrant workers with valid visas in Saudi Arabia, most of which, some 264,000 people, are women, according to January data from the Saudi Arabian foreign ministry.
Activists had said the moratorium had loopholes that made it ineffective, partly because of high demand in the Middle East for domestic workers and a conception among Indonesian domestic workers that working abroad was a way out of poverty and unemployment.
Instead of protecting migrant workers, the ban failed to stop workers from working abroad illegally and increased the risk of human trafficking, Wahyu Susilo of labor rights NGO Migrant Care said on Saturday, citing a survey conducted shortly before and after the moratorium came into effect in May 2015.
Migrant Care surveyed 2,600 Indonesian domestic workers heading for the Middle East and Malaysia from March 2015 to May 2016 and found that about 1,000 of them were, in fact, newly recruited workers.
"The government at the time simply banned the sending of migrant workers abroad but did not tighten the supervision of labor migration,” Wahyu said.
He called on policymakers to properly address the protection of migrant workers in recipient countries like Saudi Arabia and consider making bilateral agreements with those countries.
He also encouraged legislators to pass the long-awaited domestic worker protection bill, which would improve Indonesia’s bargaining position in pushing receiving countries to protect Indonesian migrant workers abroad.
The bill was endorsed as a House of Representatives' initiative in March of this year after nearly two decades languishing in the legislature. The next step is for the House and the executive to discuss the bill before it can be passed into law, but deliberations on the bill have yet to start.
