The News Lens
Date: May 17, 2017
Compiled and translated by Yuan-ling Liang

Indonesia is set to stop sending migrant workers as domestic help overseas and plans to reduce the number to zero by 2017, says Soes Hindarno, director of placement and protection of overseas workers under the Indonesia’s Ministry of Manpower.

Nearly 70% of Indonesia’s seven million migrant workers are lower-educated, which leads to 60% of them working as domestic workers overseas. Asian countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan are all main locations where these workers are sent to.

In recent years, exploitation of Indonesian employees all over the world has been reported widely and NGOs in Indonesia have drawn attention to human rights issues. The government has started to restrict the outflow of these workers and is striving to keep them in the country.

In 2015, Indonesian officials banned their citizens from working in 21 Middle Eastern countries to protect laborers from being exploited. However, many do not believe the policy will have much impact since laborers who were already working in these countries are out of Indonesian officials’ control.

Indonesia President Joko Widodo launched the zero-maid policy at the beginning of May. The Indonesian government is gradually reducing the number of its domestic workers working abroad and is planning to launch more than 10 million domestic job openings for these workers while providing technical training as well. By 2018, it is anticipated that Indonesia would export mostly technical workers instead of laborers without professional skills.     [FULL  STORY]