A legislator and workers’ rights activist has highlighted what she says is a massive scam facilitated by the Manpower Ministry to fleece millions of dollars from Indonesian migrant workers seeking to remain in Saudi Arabia after overstaying their visas.
Rieke Dyah Pitaloka, a member of the House of Representatives’ Commission IX, which oversees labor and welfare, said on Wednesday that the whole scheme stemmed from a ministry regulation issued on June 7.
She said the regulation, pertaining to the visa amnesty fee to be paid by overstayers wishing to remain in Saudi Arabia legally, claimed to be based on an article in Indonesia’s 2004 Migrant Worker Placement and Protection Law, but that the article in question did not exist.
The regulation states that Indonesians wanting to make use of the amnesty would have to pay a fee of 3,900 riyal ($1,040) and an administrative charge of 1,700 riyal to the Indonesian-based Association of Migrant Worker Service Companies (Apjati).
However, Rieke said the official fee levied by the Saudi Arabian authorities was only 550 riyal.
She said there were an estimated 72,000 Indonesian overstayers in the kingdom, some 80 percent of whom were expected to seek amnesty to remain there.
This means that under the regulation, they will pay a combined $86 million to Apjati. Of that figure, Rieke said, the migrant worker placement companies would get $43.2 million, or $750 per worker, while the amount paid to the Saudi authorities would be $8.45 million.
“That means that under the regulation, there’s still around $34.4 million left over. Where does that money go?” Rieke said.
She added it was strange that the government would seek to involve Apjati and its member companies in the amnesty policy in the first place.
“They have no business being mixed up with the amnesty. Especially when you consider that most of the migrant workers who overstayed their visas did so after running away from their employers and failing to get their back pay or other matters sorted out by the placement agencies,” she said.
The ministry regulation was issued in light of Saudi moves to crack down on immigration offenders in the country. The Saudi government has given illegal migrants until July 3 to settle their documents or leave. Some 180,000 illegal foreign workers have already left the oil-rich kingdom, a newspaper report said last week.
Rieke, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said that with tens of thousands of Indonesians yet to register with Indonesian diplomatic missions in the kingdom for the amnesty, the size of the payout from Apjati’s handling of the payments looked certain to increase by a significant amount.
“I’m not claiming that all the information I have is correct. What I want is for the government to clarify whether it’s true,” she said.
“Based on past experience with the worker amnesty in Malaysia a few years ago, we should work to prevent the same sort of thing happening to our workers in Saudi Arabia.”
She also called for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to investigate the matter and carry out an audit of the money collected from the Indonesian workers under the purview of the Manpower Ministry regulation.
Rieke said the government had already bumbled its response to the Saudi policy, citing a riot outside the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah earlier this month by migrant workers in which one person was killed.
More than 12,000 workers had gathered outside the office on June 9 to register for the amnesty program, overwhelming the consulate staff. The crowding, long wait and searing heat resulted in frayed tempers that quickly escalated into a riot, with the workers throwing rocks at the consulate and starting a fire.
In the ensuing stampede, a female migrant worker was killed and a security guard injured.
“After the riot in Jeddah, it would be truly shameful and tragic for government officials to be trying to exploit this situation,” Rieke said.
For its part, the government says the worker placement agencies have to be involved in the amnesty process because they are responsible for arranging employment in Saudi Arabia for the workers who want to remain there.
A multi-agency team, involving officials from the Manpower Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and Apjati, is currently in the kingdom to oversee the amnesty registration process.
In an email from Jeddah on Tuesday, Reyna Usman, the Manpower Ministry’s director general for worker placement and the head of the government team, said Indonesia had requested more time from the Saudi government for Indonesian workers to register for the amnesty program.
“We’ve asked for a delay because we need a lot more time to arrange all the paperwork and immigration requirements that are necessary for the workers to continue staying in Saudi Arabia,” Reyna said.
He added his team was also using the opportunity to push for better working conditions for those choosing to stay.
“We’re calling for the new work contracts to explicitly address the points of the workers’ take-home pay, weekly days off, compensation, time off, insurance and so on,” he said.
“We also want the workers to have their salaries transferred into their own bank accounts, and to be given access to communicate with their families in Indonesia.”
Reyna said the Saudi authorities had responded positively to the team’s visit and planned to host more intensive discussions on the issue.
“They promised that they would facilitate a ministerial-level meeting to discuss this matter and that they would immediately bring our proposals before the king,” he said.
There are an estimated 1.5 million Indonesians working in Saudi Arabia, mostly female domestic workers, according to Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency (BPS).
A moratorium on domestic workers going to the kingdom has been in place since mid-2011, following the execution of a maid who was convicted of killing her employer. But activists say the lack of job opportunities at home means large numbers of low-skilled Indonesians continue to head to the kingdom illegally.
The moratorium has also been highlighted as the reason for the high number of visa overstayers wanting to remain there, given the difficulty of returning there legally if they were made to leave.
