JakartaPost-Aug 9
Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to test a unified channel for the recruitment and placement of migrant domestic workers later this month, but critics say the new system will require strict monitoring to prevent a recurrence of labor violations. Jakarta lifted its ban on sending workers to Malaysia on Aug. 1, ending a two-week interruption, after both countries agreed to commit to the use of a single hiring and placement platform: Indonesia’s One Channel System (OCS). The new scheme will integrate the online systems of both the Indonesian diplomatic mission and Malaysia’s immigration authority. Applications are currently being manually processed by the Indonesian Embassy pending the trial of the new system. Some 23,000 domestic workers have been approved to be matched with Malaysian employers, Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia Hermono said recently, as reported by The Star on Saturday. Hermono said the workers would be coming in stages, starting in mid-August. “The pilot project through the OCS will start in mid-August, when the platform is ready,” he said as quoted by The Star. “But we’ve already processed the requests manually using the embassy’s platform.” Jakarta had stopped sending workers to Malaysia after it was found that the recipient country had been recruiting workers outside of the OCS, which had been agreed upon as the official system in April. Malaysia relies on millions of foreign workers, who mainly come from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal, to fill factory and plantation jobs shunned by locals. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/08/08/indonesia-malaysia-to-trial-unified-domestic-worker-recruitment-system.html.
