Commentary: The Ruyati case and the plight of the maids
Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta Sat, 06/25/2011 8:00 AM
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Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta Sat, 06/25/2011 8:00 AM
The Indonesian government’s decision last week to stop sending maids to Saudi Arabia starting as early as next month should only be a temporary ad hoc measure that would be revoked as soon as both countries put in place stronger legal frameworks for the protection of the human and labor rights of our migrant workers in the gulf state.
The national outcry over the last few days after the surprise execution of Ruyati binti Satubi, who was convicted of murdering her Saudi employer, is of course understandable. But we should not allow it to blind us to the greatly important economic role the millions of Indonesian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Gulf have for their native villages in Java.
No other government program, not even poverty alleviation projects, can be so effective in directly injecting as much cash into the rural economy in Java as the billions of dollars our migrant worker women in the Middle East remit every year.
We would not tolerate any abuse of our migrant workers overseas, but with more than 1 million Indonesian women working as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia alone, there are inherently big risks that some of them are bound to be abused.
In fact, we should magnanimously acknowlege that most of our migrant workers who work as maids overseas have been treated better and paid much higher than domestic servants in Indonesia.
The temporary moratorium on sending maids to Saudi Arabia should be used as an opportunity to look deeper into all aspects related to our migrant workers in the Middle East, right down from the qualification of employment agencies, their recruitment processes, their preparations (technical training), the terms and condition of their employment contracts and the terms imposed by the Saudi Arabian government on the families employing the migrant workers.
We should understand the plight of our migrant workers, who have been forced by the extremely difficult economic conditions at home to set out from their native villages into such far-away places as the Middle East with a strikingly different social environment and culture.
The acute shortage of jobs in Indonesia for low-skilled laborers has forced them to seek work abroad to support their families and pay for the education of their children or siblings. It is indeed a great sacrifice and heart-rending experience for them to be uprooted from their home villages and to leave behind their families for such a long period of time.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself, when addressing the Intenational Labor Organization’s conference in Geneva a few days before Ruyati’s execution, praised Indonesian migrant workers as economic heroes who should be given social justice and protected from abuse.
Working overseas as maids will remain an outlet for the millions of unemployed, unskilled laborers from rural areas, until our economy is able to expand fast enough to absorb all the job seekers.
But the Saudi Arabian government should also realize the great contribution of Indonesian migrant workers to the welfare of its people through the supply to its economy of low-priced labor and should consequently see to it that the maids are treated humanely by their employing families.
