Kompas
Selasa, 16 Maret 2004
Bekasi - Sri Maryanti (18), pembantu rumah tangga di Perumahan Pondok Ungu Permai Blok MM VI RT 04 RW 26, Kali Abang Tengah, Bekasi Utara, akhirnya terbebas dari siksaan panjang oleh majikannya.
Hari Senin (15/3), pembantu rumah tangga asal Lampung yang bekerja di rumah pasangan Daniel alias Pin Pin (28) dan Lidya (30) itu dibebaskan warga sekitar setelah mereka mendengar teriakannya.
Dalam pengakuannya kepada warga dan polisi, Sri mengatakan, selama hampir satu tahun terakhir dia sering disiksa dan disekap kedua majikannya. Sri Maryanti sudah bekerja dua tahun di rumah tersebut.
Keterangan yang dihimpun Kompas menyebutkan, Sri dapat lolos dari rumah majikannya setelah ia berteriak-teriak minta diberi makan kepada warga sekitarnya. Sebab, selama tiga hari ia mengaku tidak diberi makan dan minum.
Mendengar teriakan itu, warga yang tinggal di belakang rumah Daniel segera menghubungi warga lain. Disaksikan Ketua RT Faidi, warga kemudian membebaskan Sri yang saat itu disekap di kamar mandi. Pada saat itu Daniel dan istrinya sedang bepergian.
Setelah dibebaskan, Sri langsung dibawa ke rumah salah seorang warga, sementara Daniel dan istrinya digiring ke rumah Faidi begitu pulang pada sore harinya.
Warga yang geram dengan perbuatan majikan korban sempat memukuli Daniel dan istrinya. Bahkan, polisi terpaksa harus melepaskan tembakan ke udara untuk membubarkan kerumunan warga saat hendak membawa kedua tersangka ke kantor Kepolisian Sektor (Polsek) Metro Bekasi Utara.
Kepala Polsek Metro Bekasi Utara Ajun Komisaris Mardi WSD mengatakan, polisi sudah menahan Daniel dan Lidya. Daniel dimasukkan ke ruang tahanan Polsek Bekasi Utara, sementara istrinya ke salah satu ruangan di lantai dua Polsek karena harus merawat dua anak perempuan mereka yang berusia dua tahun dan satu tahun.
"Kedua tersangka sudah mengakui perbuatan mereka. Alasannya, mereka kesal karena korban sering mencuri uang dan makanan. Lalu, korban sering dipukuli. Jika keluarga itu berpergian, korban disekap di kamar mandi agar tidak melarikan diri," kata Mardi.
Tidak tampak wajah penyesalan di wajah tersangka Daniel yang bekerja di salah satu perusahaan di Pulo Gadung, Jakarta Timur. Daniel tetap bersikeras bahwa penyiksaan yang dilakukannya itu untuk memberi pelajaran kepada Sri yang dituduhnya sering mencuri makanan dan uang. Namun, ditanya kenapa dia tidak memberikan gaji yang menjadi hak Sri, tersangka tak menjawab.
Sri yang diambil dari yayasan penyalur pembantu di Jakarta Timur itu hingga kini masih di kantor Polsek Metro Bekasi Utara. Sri berharap dapat pulang ke kampung halamannya, namun ia tidak tahu bagaimana bisa mencapai tempat tersebut. Sri datang ke Jakarta untuk menjadi pembantu karena ajakan seorang tetangganya.
Selama bekerja, Sri tidak pernah pulang ke kampung halamannya. "Kami sedang berusaha untuk menghubungi keluarga korban di Lampung. Untuk sementara dia tinggal di sini dulu karena tidak ada tempat lain," kata Mardi.
Sri yang ditemui di kantor Polsek Metro Bekasi Utara, Senin kemarin, masih terlihat lemah. Dibalut celana pendek dan blus berwarna merah muda yang sudah lusuh dengan rambut yang terlihat kaku, gadis yang tidak tamat sekolah dasar itu mengatakan, penyiksaan terhadap dirinya sering dilakukan Daniel. Majikan laki-lakinya itu sering memukul dengan alat-alat, seperti gesper, alat penggorengan, gayung, atau kabel. Pemukulan biasa dilakukan terhadap bagian kepala, wajah, dan punggung. Istrinya juga ikut memukul, tetapi hanya dengan tangan kosong.
Mencuri karena lapar
Penyiksaan, kata Sri, dilakukan sejak keluarga tersebut pindah ke rumah kontrakan mereka di Bekasi hampir setahun lalu. Penyiksaan yang berlangsung cukup lama itu menyebabkan kulit pada kedua telapak tangan Sri terkelupas karena selalu disuruh mencuci pakaian dengan deterjen pemutih pakaian, serta luka memar di mata dan pipi. Gaji sebesar Rp 200.000 per bulan yang dijanjikan majikannya pun tidak pernah diberikan.
Karena kelaparan, Sri sering mengambil makanan dengan diam-diam. Sayang, perbuatannya itu acapkali diketahui sehingga majikan makin menyiksa Sri. Jika dalam kondisi babak belur seusai dihajar majikan, Sri tidak diperkenankan keluar rumah untuk menjemur pakaian. Pekerjaan itu biasanya dilakukan sendiri oleh Daniel.
Para tetangga yang mencoba memberi makan Sri dengan diam-diam saat korban diperkenankan ke halaman rumah akhirnya diketahui Daniel. Pengawasan terhadap Sri makin diperketat. Jika semua anggota keluarga tidak ada di rumah, Sri dikurung di kamar mandi.
Terakhir, kata Sri, ia sudah tiga hari berturut-turut tidak diberi makan dan minum. Meski demikian, Sri harus tetap bekerja seperti biasa. Ia pun harus tidur di kamar mandi dengan posisi duduk di kursi plastik tanpa sandaran. Pintu kamar mandi dikunci dari luar dengan kabel yang dikaitkan ke keran air di dapur.
Menurut Herlina, warga yang memiliki kunci duplikat rumah kontrakan majikan Sri, pada Minggu pagi kemarin ketika keluarga majikan pergi ke gereja, dengan sekuat tenaga Sri berdiri di atas kursi di dekat lubang angin kamar mandi. Sri berteriak cukup kencang untuk meminta makanan kepada warga yang berada di luar. Beruntung, ada seorang anak kecil yang sedang bermain yang mendengar teriakan Sri.
Anak kecil itu berlari ke rumah memanggil ibunya. Kepada Ibu Anto itu, Sri memohon diberi makanan karena ia sangat lapar. Lewat lubang angin, nasi dan air putih diberikan kepada Sri. Kemudian, peristiwa itu dilaporkan ke Ketua RT.
Menurut catatan Kompas, penyiksaan terhadap pembantu rumah tangga di Bekasi cukup sering terjadi. Kasus yang cukup menghebohkan terjadi pada Sari (18), pembantu di Jalan Camelia V RT 03 RW 25, Perumahan Taman Harapan Baru, Kota Bekasi, pada akhir tahun 2003. (ELN)
Headlines
16 March 2004
Selama Setahun Sri Maryanti Dianiaya dan Disekap Majikan
06 March 2004
Indonesia's abused migrant workers
Al-Jazeera, June 03, 2004, By Marianne Kearney in Jakarta
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Last week the image of a 19-year-old house cleaner, her shirt pulled up to reveal horrific burn scars on her back, was plastered across the front pages of both Indonesian and Malaysian newspapers.
The now infamous maid, Nirmala Bonet, from Tuapakas, an isolated village in the desperately poor region of West Timor, had left Indonesia last year in the hope of earning a decent wage to help her parents.
Nirmala was just one of several hundred thousand Indonesians who flee poor rural areas in search of work in parts of Asia and the Middle East each year.
About two million Indonesians, poorly educated and mostly unskilled labourers, are now working in comparatively well paid jobs as maids, drivers and construction workers in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei, according to official figures.
With 40 million Indonesians unemployed, out of population of 220 million, such jobs are highly coveted.
Indonesia's foreign workers send home almost one billion dollars every year through banks but bring home even more privately, says Dina Suprihatin from the Migrant Workers' Cooperative.
Remittances sent home by migrant workers are one of the highest earners of foreign exchange after gas, oil and tourism industries.
Escaping poverty
But for many, the opportunity to escape rural poverty and unemployment becomes too high a price to pay.
Several months after being employed as a housemaid by a Malaysian family, Nirmala was discovered by a security guard. She had a horribly swollen and bleeding face.
She told local reporters that her 35-year-old boss, Yim Pek Ha, burnt her with boiling water and an iron whenever she made mistakes cleaning the house.
The case has provoked such public outrage that the Malaysian Prime Minister, Abd Allah Ahmad Badawi, promised to punish the perpetrators of such "heinous crimes".
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| Protesters tried to remove barbed |
Meanwhile, last week, Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri ordered her officials to finance a trip for Nirmala's mother, Martha Toni Bonet, to visit her daughter in hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"Nirmala is not an animal," read one headline, quoting Martha Toni Bonet, beside a photo of her breaking down as she met her daughter.
During one week last October, a dozen women arrived at Jakarta's Sutanto police hospital in East Jakarta. They had been beaten, were severely depressed and, in one case, a woman was raped while working overseas.
Following this spate of reports, several political and religious leaders, such as assembly speaker Amien Rais, began calling for a moratorium on the export of Indonesia's migrant workers.
But the move was curtailed when hundreds of successful migrant workers demonstrated against the proposal arguing they needed work.
Fleeing terrible treatment
But the physical toll on young women is high, particularly for the majority who work as unskilled housemaids.
At least 250 women fleeing beatings, psychological stress and even rapes while working in Southeast Asia and the Middle East arrive at Sutanto's emergency ward each year says Dr Febiani, the head of the hospital's domestic violence unit.
"The government sees these women as just a tool to make money. If the women get work overseas it means they don't have to have a proper policy to deal with unemployment, or how to improve the economy" Dina Suprihatin,
Almost all of them come from 330,000 unskilled female workers employed in Southeast Asia and the Middle East annually, says the hospital. Only 22,000 female workers sent abroad in 2002 were skilled according to Labour Ministry figures.
Migrant Workers' Cooperative
But labour activists say abuse levels, particularly towards maids, are far higher.
Dina Nuryati from Fobumi, a non-government group that assists migrant workers, estimates that dozens of women who returned from working overseas had been raped but that many are too ashamed to admit it.
"We see a lot of cases of cruelty and abuse at Sutanto hospital, I think people do this because they feel they've bought their maids so they feel they have the right to do anything," says Nuryati.
Many of the women who report to Sutanto hospital only come because they are persuaded to do so by labour activists or airport officials at Jakarta's special designated airport terminal for migrant workers, points out Nuryati.
Many more never report their cases to Indonesian embassies overseas nor to police when they return home she says.
No paycheck
Apart from physical and sexual abuse, many of the migrant workers are not paid and others are injured or killed during work accidents.
Last year alone, 85 maids died in Singapore after they fell from their apartments says Nuryati. Most were trying to hand out heavy loads of washing on drying sticks from apartment balconies or were cleaning windows, she adds.
And hundreds of prospective and current migrant workers have complained to labour agencies, as well as Indonesian embassies, that either the labour company cheated them out of their pay, or their bosses refused to pay them.
Moreover, an unknown number of women promised jobs as maids or waitresses are trafficked into Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan and then forced to work as prostitutes.
Domestic helpers protest possible
Last year, Makdum Tahir, the Indonesian consul-general in Kota Kinabalu, a town in Sabah, Malaysia, said he negotiated to free around 500 women who had been smuggled from adjacent Kalimantan, had their passports taken and were forced to pay off their smuggling debts through prostitution. 
tax on tiny salaries in Hong Kong
According to non-government groups lobbying on behalf of migrant workers, Indonesian labourers, particularly women, often suffer harsh working conditions and are frequently abused because the Indonesian government has been lax in protecting their rights.
"The government sees these women as just a tool to make money. If the women get work overseas it means they don't have to have a proper policy to deal with unemployment, or have to improve the economy," says Dina Suprihatin, from the Migrant Workers' Cooperative.
The Labour Ministry makes money from the workers because employee agencies have to pay licence fees to be granted permission to send workers overseas, and pay a $15 fee to send each woman out of the country, points out Suprihatin.
Suprihatin also accuses the Labour Ministry of colluding with labour companies, which have little interest in abiding by their contracts.
The Labour Ministry denies it has failed to protect Indonesia's migrant workers.
Lack of protection
Officials from the ministry argue they have been lobbying hard on behalf of its Indonesian workers, talking to foreign ministers about the lack of rights for Indonesian workers, issuing a new ministerial regulation on the exporting of migrant workers and just this month they signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia.
"Indonesian workers often encounter abuses at every stage of the migration cycle, but this accord [with Malaysia]treats them like tradable goods, with almost no guarantees for their rights"
"There are so many forms of protection trying to be established by the Indonesian government," says Andes Marjono, Director of the Protection and Advocacy division.
LaShawn R Jefferson,
executive director,
women's rights division of Human Rights Watch
However the memorandum has come under fire from US based Human Rights Watch, which points out that since workers' visas are tied to their employers it makes it difficult for them to report abuses or escape.
Workers who escape are immediately considered illegal workers and can be deported.
"Indonesian workers often encounter abuses at every stage of the migration cycle, but this accord treats them like tradable goods, with almost no guarantees for their rights," said LaShawn R Jefferson, executive director of the women's rights division of Human Rights Watch.
Black books
Marjono points out that the ministry is also blacklisting abusive employers.
But this is not much use to the young girls who are posted to positions by Indonesian labour companies who care little which company is blacklisted, says labour activist Wahyu Susilo.
Such an agreement does not protect workers against abuse or from being sold as sex slaves.
After all this government lobbying, working conditions for maids in every country except Hong Kong, have not been regulated - they have to work seven days a week, and have no limit to the number of hours worked, says Nuryati.
In Hong Kong, house cleaners have set hours, have one day off a week and can take their problems with employers to a government-established claims board.
The Migrant Workers Cooperative and other non-government groups have drawn up a special law dealing with migrant workers.
But with two rounds of presidential elections in July and September, few politicians are hopeful that it will be passed this year.
01 March 2004
Menakertrans Tangkap Basah Enam PJTKI
Suara Merdeka
Senin, 1 Maret 2004
DUBAI-Menteri Tenaga Kerja dan Transmigrasi (Menakertrans) Jacob Nuwa Wea menemukan 10 tenaga kerja Indonesia (TKI) wanita yang ditempatkan secara ilegal oleh perusahaan jasa TKI (PJTKI) pemegang surat ijin usaha penempatan (SIUP) resmi.
"Saya sangat kecewa dengan kenyataan ini. Saya akan proses enam PJTKI itu, jika terbukti melanggar peraturan maka SIUP-nya akan kami cabut," kata Jacob ketika bertemu dengan 10 TKI wanita di Dubai, Uni Emirat Arab, Minggu pagi waktu Dubai.
Jacob ke Dubai bersama sejumlah anggota rombongan, seperti Dirjen Pembinaan Penempatan Tenaga Kerja Luar Negeri Depnakertrans I Gusti Made Arka, Direktur Perlindungan TKI Marjono, Kapus Humas Depnakertrans Hotma Panjaitan, Direktur Timur Tengah Deplu Muzamil, Deputi Menko Kesra Sudirman, anggota DPR Hadi Wasikoen dan Tjarda Mochtar, Sekjen Indonesia Employe Agency Association (Idea) Djamal Azis.
Mukminah, satu dari 10 TKI tersebut sudah berada di Bandara Internasional Dubai dua hari, yakni sejak tanggal 27 Februari 2004. Ke-10 TKW tersebut mengaku dikirim oleh enam PJTKI. Perusahaan itu adalah PT Amanah Sejahtera (satu TKI), PT Almina Indah (dua), PT Bina Citra Kreasi (dua), PT Acindo (satu), PT Mutiara Bahari Alam Ria (dua), PT Jaya Mandiri Perkasa (satu).
Para TKI ketika ditanya mengatakan, mereka ditampung oleh PJTKI resmi. "Saya ditampung di perusahaan resmi karena ada papan nama PT terpampang besar-besar," kata Aisyah yang ditempatkan oleh PT Bina Citra Kreasi.
Sementara Mukminah mengatakan dirinya tidak mengetahui nama perusahaan yang mengirimnya. Dia hanya mengetahui "sponsor" yang membantu menempatkannya, yakni Ratna.
Depnakertrans sejak enam Agustus 2003 sudah menutup penempatan TKI ke sejumlah negara Timur Tengah, termasuk UEA. Dengan temuan itu, ke-10 TKI itu ditempatkan secara ilegal oleh PJTKI tersebut.
Ke-10 TKI menyatakan, mereka tidak dilatih oleh PJTKI. Mereka hanya ditampung, untuk kemudian diberangkatkan. Tidak ada laporan ke Depnakertrans dan KBRI di Dubai tentang TKI yang ditempatkan.
Rendahnya kualitas TKI yang ditempatkan ke UEA mengakibatkan mereka sering ditolak oleh majikan.
Yusron, petugas konsuler KJRI Dubai mengatakan, majikan sudah membayar lebih dari 1.000 dolar AS untuk mendapatkan TKI tetapi tidak jarang mereka mendapat TKI yang tidak berkualitas sehingga mereka kecewa.(ant-78)