Minister Announces Withdrawal of Migrant Workers from 'Dangerous' Middle East Countrie

Jakarta Globe | June 25, 2011


Minister for manpower and transmigration Muhaimin Iskandar said he considers Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries the most dangerous countries for Indonesian migrant workers (TKI) and promised to withdraw all workers from those regions.

“We will gradually withdraw our domestic workers in those countries because of the level of danger,” Muhaimin said in a public discussion held by news radio station Trijaya FM in Jakarta on Saturday.

Moreover, Muhaimin said that his ministry has tightened the requirements for sending domestic workers to Middle Eastern countries since January.

As a result, he claimed that starting this year Indonesia only sent 12,000 workers to the Middle East each month, far less than last year's 30,000 to 50,000 per month.

The recent execution of Indonesian maid Ruyati binti Sapubi in Mecca last week has sparked anger in Indonesia, with the public accusing the government of not doing enough to protect migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Thursday condemned Ruyati's execution, saying that it “broke the norms and manners of international relations.” He said the government would form a task force to follow up on legal cases involving migrant workers.

“I have already decided to put a moratorium on sending migrant workers to Saudi Arabia until there is agreement on the framework to protect our workers,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Friday. “We must create more job opportunities.”



(Has anyone ever stopped to think why there are so many Indonesian and Phillipino home hepls aka domestic slaves who murder or at least try to murder their employers in their host countries? A lot has already been said about this, but very little done, specialy in Indonesia and the Phillipines where the governments roar like lions but behave like paper-tigers, all bluster but no guts. It is understood that the so-called migrant workers need overseas employment to help their families at home, but ultimately the governments and the so-called employment agencies strike up some of that coveted uang mas also!
To get back on topic, the migrant home-help has very little if any rights at all in their host countries, working hours are from anytime till anytime, work not specified,but at the whim of their employers, only permitted to leave the house on their employers say-so, open to all-sorts of abuse, physical as well as mental, belittled and goaded as being of low-class, so when finally enough has become enough the domestic "slave" has had a gut full and reacts! Makes a complaint to the local constabulary, but to no avail, goes home and receives a second hepling of abuse for taking the trouble to complain about their employers, and so it goes on, and one day.....mata gelap!...with the regrettable results, juist think a moment or two about that, if they would have wanted to commit murder they would have been able to do so easier if they had stayed home. siK>)