The Jakarta Post
Oct 11, 2017
Many more Indonesians would want to work overseas if they could. But our citizens must go through twice the number of procedures as their Southeast Asian counterparts, according to a new report on migration by the World Bank.
This would be bad enough but the fact is that most Indonesian migrant workers have not even completed secondary education, according to the report titled “Migrating to Opportunity: Overcoming Barriers to Labor Mobility in Southeast Asia,” released on Monday.
We lag behind neighbors in encouraging migrant work: remittances account for less than 2 percent of our gross domestic product, far lower than the 10 percent share in the Philippines, 7 percent in Vietnam, 5 percent in Myanmar and 3 percent in Cambodia.
As one of the main drivers of the ASEAN Economic Community, Indonesia should be trying its best to speed up barrier-free migration and make its people aware of the benefits. Instead, we see that outdated mentality again — treating citizens like serfs, preventing them from moving and working where they please. Far from facilitating citizens in working abroad, Indonesians go through at least 10 steps compared to half that number of procedures in neighboring countries.
“The significant documentation required and the lengthy deployment process can make migrants vulnerable to exploitation or can lead migrants to seek out recruitment agencies that can expedite deployment by falsifying documents,” the report said.
Following a moratorium on working in the Middle East, 3.5 million Indonesian migrant workers were recorded last year compared to the previous figure of 3.7 million. Remittances thus declined too, to US$8.9 billion from $9.4 billion.
The decline suggests the moratorium has not led to a spike of documented workers heading to other destinations beyond the Middle East. Meanwhile as the above report noted, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia have become Southeast Asia’s migration hubs for almost all 6.5 million migrant workers in the region.
The figures from Indonesia reflect the dismal focus on encouraging easier procedures for working overseas despite unemployment earlier this year reaching 7 million, over 5 percent, though this was lower than the almost 6 percent in 2015. Last year nearly 29 million, over 11 percent, were reportedly living below the precarious poverty line, earning less than Rp 350,000 ($25.91) per month.
Poverty is not only about economics; it is about dignity, and it takes a lot to step forward and claim government provisions for the poorest of the poor. When information on possible options of earning income emerge, too often people do not wait for clearly legal avenues.
Many will risk life and limb to grab any possible opportunity, hence the repeated woes of our undocumented workers — including hundreds who drown at sea as they use, as it turns out, the services of criminal labor recruiters.
The poorly educated are too often blamed for the persistent and rampant activities of labor recruiters, even among legal operators, who exploit ignorance. At the very least the government should cut red tape and increase protection for workers who struggle far from home.
(http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2017/10/11/editorial-red-tape-for-migrants.html)
