Agreement Fails to Shield Migrants: Activists

The newly signed amendment to the Indonesia-Malaysia migrant workers agreement may give Indonesians working in the neighboring country more benefits, but labor activists said it still wasn’t enough when it comes to providing protection.

Under the terms of the amended memorandum of understanding signed on Monday by the labor ministers of both countries, Indonesian migrant workers will have the right to retain their passports, a weekly day off as well as paid annual leave and access to communications.

The newly signed amendment also resolved the thorny issue of the minimum wage — that it not be lower than in Indonesia — and provides for overtime pay.

Ali Akbar, a program manager on migrant worker issues for the non-profit Human Rights Working Group, said that such provisions should not be deemed as achievements for the governments in ensuring workers’ rights.

“Those are normative rights that should have been embedded in the first place without having to have them ensured by the MoU, since those rights are guaranteed in the UN Convention on the Protection of Migrant Workers” he said.

He also said the negotiation for amending the MoU should have been focused on more essential issues to ensure the workers’ protection, such as how to prevent them from being abused by their employers or securing Malaysia’s commitment for a pro-protection policy towards undocumented migrant workers.

Other more essential clauses that should have been included, Ali said, were how to ensure that the workers’ rights were upheld when they found themselves dealing with the legal system.

“And ensuring that Malaysia would not be discriminative in legal processes when addressing disputes between employers and their workers,” he said on the sidelines of a discussion on statelessness organized by the UNHCR Indonesia.

The initial MoU was signed in 2006 and was scheduled to expire this May, but it was suspended in 2009 in the wake of complaints of abuse of Indonesian workers by Malaysian employers. The amended agreement has formally lifted the ban on sending domestic workers to Malaysia.

Nurharsono, coordinator for the advocacy division at non-profit Migrant Care, concurred that the points mentioned by the ministry should not be seen as breakthroughs.

“There are many things that are more substantial left unaddressed, such as the possibility of being deported for undocumented workers and what actions would be taken against employers who hire undocumented workers.

“I wonder if the MoU also included provisions on any reprimands for employers who insist on retaining their workers’ passport,” he said, adding that there should a mechanism to verify that the workers can really keep their own passport at all times.

“Overall, the amendments do not cover much on the workers’ protection,” he said. He added that the governments had never invited migrant worker stakeholders into the negotiation process.

“It shows again that the government failed to protect the workers’ normative rights,” Nurharsono said.