Indonesia Agrees to Re-Allow Migrant Worker Placement to Malaysia

TheIndonesia.id - The Indonesian government has agreed to re-allow migrant worker placement to Malaysia after the two countries’ representatives signed agreement on the implementation of MoU on the placement and protection of Indonesian migrant workers, or PMI.

Indonesian Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah and her Malaysian counterpart Saravanan Murugan signed the joint statement in Jakarta on Thursday, July 28, and Fauziyah said PMI placement to Malaysia is to be re-allowed in August this year.

“The two sides agreed on the recommencement of PMI recruitment and placement to Malaysia starting on August 1, 2022, depending on the effectiveness of the MoU’s implementation,” Fauziyah said in a statement.

A joint working group meeting was held prior to the signing, and the Minister said problems related to technical and regulational implementation of the MoU were acknowledged in the forum. The two countries then agreed on necessary steps to ensure a comprehensive implementation, including on the use of one channel system (OCS) scheme.

“Indonesia and Malaysia agree and reaffirm that OCS will be the only mechanism for recruitment and placement of PMI to Malaysia by integrating existing online systems managed by Indonesian and Malaysian authorities,” Fauziyah explained.

The MoU on the placement and protection of PMI was signed by Fauziyah and Murugan on April 1, and it regulates that the placement, monitoring, and repatriation of PMI will be done through one channel system.

Fauziyah added that a pilot project must take place three months prior to the full implementation of OCS to ensure the system works properly.

Previously, the Indonesian government decided to temporarily stop sending migrant workers to Malaysia from July 13 after the destination country was found to have breached bilateral agreement on the placement of migrant workers.

Director of citizen protection at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Judha Nugraha said on July 14 that the decision was made after representatives from the Indonesian government had found a number of evidences that Malaysia continued to employ the “maid online” system (SMO), which is a mechanism not included in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two countries.

“The SMO particularly makes Indonesian migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation because the mechanism is not in line with Law No. 18/2017 on the Protection of Migrant Workers,” Nugraha said at the time.