07/24/07 14:25
Seoul - Visiting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono met members of the Indonesian community in South Korea in a gathering at the Indonesian embassy building here on Tuesday as part of his program during a three-day state visit in this North Asian country.
At the gathering, a number of Indonesian migrant workers complained to the President about problems they were facing in South Korea.
Bambang Sutrisno, one of the workers from Ngawi district in Central Java, told Yudhoyono that although not all workers had problems in South Korea, they needed an institution or representative from the government to accommodate and help solve their problems.
"Ever since private manpower recruitment agencies (PJTKIs) were replaced by a government-to-government system , there has been no organization to which workers can turn for help to solve their problems because of the language barrier and their inability to understand South Korean labor laws," Bambang said, adding that such an organization was urgently needed.
Bambang said the Indonesian Embassy in Seoul once planned to establish an institution to protect the country`s migrant workers in South Korea but the plan had yet to be realized to date.
Therefore, he urged the Head of State to help realize such an institution.
Besides Bambang, Saeful Hadi, another Indonesian worker in Taejon suggested that the Indonesian embassy post manpower officers in Busan, Taejon and other South Korean cities where many Indonesians were working.
Commenting on their complaints, President Yudhoyono said the government continued to help solve the problems of Indonesian workers abroad and never did it consider them second-class citizens.
"Never have the impression that the government pays no attention to workers overseas. It is absolutely untrue, the government never considers them as second-class citizens," Yudhoyono said.
The president said the government continued to help and defend the case of its workers abroad and tried to improve the process of dispatching the workers to other countries.
At least 30,000 Indonesians are at present working in South Korea, including some 7,000 in the Pusan industrial area. (*)
