Panca Nugraha, The Jakarta Post, Mataram
The past two decades have seen many residents from West Nusa Tenggara travel overseas to work, with the government offering little protection.
Poor treatment experienced by migrant workers has become a regular occurrence. Many have been cheated by middlemen during the recruitment process, trapped by debt and deported as illegal workers from countries they were legally working in.
Others have been tortured by their employers, sexually abused and even traded among employers.
"These are some of the facts about the suffering of some of our migrant workers abroad. It's so sad," said Endang Susilowati, 42, the director of Panca Karsa Organization.
"They are praised and portrayed as foreign exchange heroes, but the suffering they experience remains in the dark. There is little protection from the government."
The Panca Karsa Organization, which focuses on the protection of migrant workers, was established in the 1980s.
Every year, the organization records at least 500 cases of migrant worker mistreatment, mostly involving women.
The cases vary. They include being cheated by middlemen, not being paid by employers, suffering torture and sexual abuse at the hands of employers, not receiving insurance in the case of an accident sustained through work and not being given the permission to contact their families back home. There have also been human trafficking allegations.
Having fought for the protection of migrant workers for two decades, Endang is known to almost every migrant worker from Lombok and Sumbawa.
Every year, West Nusa Tenggara sends an average of 45,000 workers abroad with 80 percent going to Malaysia to work on palm plantations. The others are sent to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries like Jordan, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait, and to a few Asian countries like Singapore and Japan.
Migrant workers from the region contribute significantly to national and regional foreign exchange. On average, their yearly remittance to the province reaches some Rp 500 billion (US$40 million) or half of the province's budget of around Rp 1 trillion.
In 1986, Endang, who had just completed her law degree at the University of Mataram, worked in the field for the Mataram chapter of the Indonesian Red Cross after a big quake rocked Lombok.
She was involved in a resettlement program for earthquake victims, which was carried out in cooperation with HIVOS, a Netherlands-based donor organization, and the West Nusa Tenggara regional development planning board, as well as a number of other NGOs.
Fed up with the existing organizations and decision makers in the region failing to pay enough attention to women's issues, Endang and four female friends established the Panca Karsa Foundation in 1988.
The foundation's initial program focused on empowering farmers and the families of fishermen through vocational training for the women and access to loans to start businesses.
"After intensive contact with the families of poor farmers and fishermen, we discovered that many women were forced to work overseas to help financially support their families," she said. "And numbers were increasing over the years."
With an increase in the number of women becoming migrant workers, and as the problems they faced became more and more complex, Endang and her foundation colleagues decided to change their focus to migrant worker issues.
They began by providing assistance for migrant workers from Lombok.
In 1996, the foundation turned into an organization that provided counseling, information, advocacy and training for women before they left to work abroad.
The staff conducted their activities directly in the workers' hamlets in West Lombok, Central Lombok and East Lombok.
"We learned of various kinds of problems and began to provide assistance and advocacy," she said. "Each case has its own characteristics. A personal approach is what is needed most."
The organization, which belongs to the Consortium of Indonesian Migrant Worker Defenders network, documented the cases they found and published them through the mass media.
The organization assisted victims and fought for their rights by confronting problems with the manpower agency and the manpower supplier, demanding they pay attention to the issues.
Endang and her staff not only investigated cases and revealed the more prominent ones to the public, they also initiated public meetings with various institutions, including the local administrations, to uncover the facts and find the solutions.
The organization, together with other parties concerned for migrant workers in the province, is fighting for the endorsement of a new bylaw on the protection of migrant workers, which has been drafted by the West Nusa Tenggara provincial administration. It is now being deliberated at the local council.
In the spirit of regional autonomy, Endang said, local authorities could implement the regulations on the protection of migrant workers in the regions they come from.
The bylaw could stipulate the migrant workers' recruitment system, from the standard tariff for administration and transportation fee charged by Manpower Suppliers, to the working contracts with the employers covering salary levels and insurance, guidance and skills training for those leaving to work abroad.
"I really wish that one day there will be a one-stop system that can help migrant workers, from the passport and visa application, to the management of their earnings upon returning home," she said.
"Until now, it has been like a continuous cycle. After their working contract ends migrants workers return home with their salaries, pay their debts and spend the rest. Once their money is gone, they go abroad again to work," Endang said.
"If they were more empowered, they could make best of the revenue as capital to start their own businesses so they wouldn't have to work overseas again."
