Thousands of migrant workers stranded overseas

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 09/01/2009

More than 1,600 Indonesian migrant workers are living temporarily at the country’s embassies and consulates abroad as the government says it can not afford to send the troubled migrants home.

The Ministry of Manpower reported Tuesday that 257 of the migrants are in Saudi Arabia, 404 are in Jordan, 506 are in Kuwait, 35 are in Qatar, 276 are in Malaysia, 113 are in Singapore, six in Brunei Darussalam and 37 are in Taiwan.

As of June this year, the government has facilitated the return of 13,839 Indonesians detained at the immigration center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

“Many of our migrant workers work illegally,” the ministry said on its website. The migrants hold haj visas, tourist visas or student visas but work overseas.

Some of the stranded migrant workers had fled from their employers, it added.

The government said it was hard to acquire exit permits from countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, because the Indonesians had not settled legal issues they were involved in, which generally include unpaid salaries and criminal offenses. “The other issue is that the budget to deal with theses issues is limited,” the ministry said.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah admitted that lack of funding posed a huge problem to the government, who would like to send these people back home.

On Monday, the Indonesian Parliament Caucus for Labor estimated that there were 15,000 migrant workers stuck abroad, unable to return home. “This is the responsibility of the state. If the president is serous about dealing with the issue the problem can be solved,” caucus member Badriyah Fayumi said, as quoted by kompas.com.