Indonesian migrant workers face bleak future
Updated
This week has seen the marking of International Migrants Day. But for many overseas workers from Asia there's little reason to celebrate. Indonesia, for one, is predicting that hundreds of thousands of migrant workers will be forced to return home, as foreign jobs dry up due to the international economic down turn.
Presenter:Stephanie March
Speaker: Alan Boulton, International Labour Organisation Jakarta director; Kathryn Richardson, professor of anthropology at the Australia National University's Research School of Asia Pacific Studies
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MARCH: On top of the five million registered migrant workers abroad, 700,000 more head overseas each year. Most of them end up in South East Asian countries or the Middle East.
Alan Boulton is the Director of the International Labour Organisation in Jakarta.
BOULTON: The Indonesian migrant labour workforce is largely women and going off to do work in households as domestic workers. About 80 per cent of the five million would be domestic workers. So it's not clear to what extent this crisis is going to impact on as it were the household sector.
MARCH: However, the remaining 20 per cent find work in formal sector jobs like manufacturing.
BOULTON: The other workers who to work in plantations, manufacturing, construction industry. It's clear that there will be a downturn.
MARCH: Authorities say migrant workers recorded remittance Indonesia in 2007 was 6.1 Billion US dollars. They estimate another two Billion goes unofficial channels.
Dr Kathryn Richardson, Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University's Research School of Asia Pacific Studies, says migrant workers usually come from the poorest parts of Indonesia, and they spend the money they earn overseas on essential items.
RICHARDSON: So they use it to educate their children, to fix up their houses.
MARCH: Alan Boulton, from the International Labour Organisation, says Malaysia alone expects to lay off at least 300,000 Indonesian migrant workers. He says it's unlikely there will be a place for them back in the domestic market.
BOULTON: The figures for unemployment are around 10 per cent in Indonesia, but the figures for under employment would be around 40 per cent. So one would expect that there is not much capacity in the Indonesian economy which itself will contract as a result of the financial crisis to absorb the extra people.
MARCH: Dr Kathryn Richardson says there are few prospects for those forced to return to poor, rural communities.
RICHARDSON: There are very few possibilities for people to engage in wage labour in those communities, so to the extent that they have become dependent on this movement of workers overseas. It is going to cause real hardships in those communities I would imagine.
MARCH: Alan Boulton agrees.
BOULTON: I mean the estimates are that there will be a rise in the number of people who fall below the poverty line in Indonesia, and that means that government and other assistance is going to be needed.
MARCH: Indonesian media reports the government has plans to combat the crisis by stimulating labour intensive industries and encouraging industrial sector growth through small business loans.
Alan Boulton says the government is looking at more short term measures.
BOULTON: The government here is also announced some increases in some of the payments, conditional cash transfer payments which are being made to poor households. The finance minister announced that more money would be put into these schemes, so they would be ways of immediately providing some assistance for as it were the most poor within the community.
MARCH: However, he says assistance may have to start even sooner.
BOULTON: Because these people might not have the money for their fare back, so there might need to be assistance of that nature, as well as assistance once they return to their communities.
