Jakarta, NU Online
The young women organization of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Fatayat NU, held a conference taking up issues on migrant workers in Jakarta on Friday.<>

Vice President Jusuf Kalla present at the occasion said Indonesia has planned to end the practice of sending female workers (TKW) abroad by creating more job opportunities.

Kalla said women are mostly forced to seek a better future abroad because of limited opportunities in Indonesia, and that many suffer mental and physical abuse.

“We will end all of this [bad treatment of workers],” the vice president said. “The problems with the TKW [will end], in five years we must [stop sending them] abroad.”

Kalla said that the agriculture sector would be a primary source of future jobs, followed by light industrial work.

The lot of the migrant worker is a major political issue in Indonesia. While remittances sent by construction workers and domestic workers from abroad has had an important impact on raising hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty, migrant workers often fall victim to abuse and in many cases have to surrender their passports to either agents or employers.

Extreme cases such as the recent murders of two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, allegedly at the hands of a British banker, occasionally make international headlines, but the domestic press is never short on stories of abuse.

Advocacy group Migrant Care estimates that every day between 400 to 500 Indonesian migrant workers are extorted by security and immigration officers on their return to Indonesia.

The group has recorded more than 1,000 extortion cases over the last ten years, which are said to involve police and military officials as well as from other government agencies.

“Everyday, 400 to 500 TKI [Indonesian migrant workers] are extorted,” Migrant Care chairwoman Anis Hidayah said in August. The figure, she said, represented 45 percent of Indonesian migrant workers returning home everyday. The extortion scheme “is systematic,” Anis continued.

The culprits, Anis alleged, are from the military, police, the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry and the Indonesian Workers Placement and Protection Agency (BNP2TKI).

Earlier this month, the newly inaugurated minister of manpower and transmigration, Hanif Dhakiri, pledged to audit all migrant worker placement agencies in a bid to crack down on widespread extortion.

Editing by Sudarto Murtaufiq