Indonesia Temporarily Stops Sending Migrant Workers to Malaysia

TheIndonesia.id - The Indonesian government has 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 Thursday, 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, as reported by Antara. “Eventually, our migrant workers depart illegally.”

Upon the finding, the Indonesian government took a step to temporarily halt the placement of Indonesian migrant workers to Malaysia until Malaysia can provide clarification and reaffirm its commitment to stop the use of SMO.

The Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur has communicated the decision to Malaysian Ministry of Human Resources which will discuss the matter with the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs.

The MoU on the placement and protection of Indonesian migrant workers, or PMI, was signed by Indonesia’s Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah and her Malaysian counterpart Saravanan Murugan on April 1.

It regulates that the placement, monitoring, and repatriation of PMI will be done through one channel system.

And while the system continues to be developed, PMI placement hasn’t continued.

“However, we ask that the implementation of the MoU has started to abolish other mechanisms aside from he one channel system,” Nugraha said.