Some of the problems facing Indonesian migrant workers start at home. They become exacerbated along the process of migrating and are manifested in various forms of human rights violations abroad. This article presents some of the issues with the recruitment practices in Indonesia, placing Indonesian migrants in vulnerable situations.

Inadequate access to information

One of the biggest challenges to information dissemination in Indonesia is the country's own vast geographical expanse. Information on labor migration is predominantly confined to urban spaces, which are less accessible to prospective migrants, who often come from the rural parts of Indonesia. The lack of access to information is further compounded by the archipelagic nature of the country, poor transportation system, and the high costs incurred in transportation. Recently, information on labor migration has been increasingly digitized, but discrepancies in internet access remain a big challenge to ensure dissemination of information. As a result, many prospective migrants rely heavily on brokers as their main source of information on employment opportunities abroad. Such reliance on brokers renders prospective migrants vulnerable to human trafficking. To curb the involvement of brokers and expand access to information, some steps have been taken by the Indonesian government, such as developing Desmigratif (Productive Migrant Village) and One Stop Service Centers (Lembaga Terpadu Satu Atap). One challenge to this is that the information given to prospective migrants tends to be one-size-fits-all, without considering the nature of specific jobs and varying labor rights in destination countries. As such, prospective migrants tend to be ill-equipped as they have limited knowledge of their rights, employment arrangements, and cultures in the destination countries

Excessive recruitment fees pushing migrants into indebtedness

Employment agencies often charge large amounts of money for the recruitment of workers. In many instances, prospective migrant workers take loans from banks, borrow money from relatives or sell their belongings to finance their recruitment. This situation of indebtedness places them in a vulnerable position, especially upon placement, as they often have no choice but to withstand exploitative conditions at work in order to pay off their debts at home. In other cases, employment agencies give loans to prospective migrant workers to finance the recruitment and other costs associated with the deployment of migrant workers, which will later be deducted from their salaries. Some employment agencies even provide a ‘stipend’ to the migrant workers’ families to lure them. This ‘fly now pay later’ phenomenon contributes to the creation of bonded labor as migrants are forced to work toward paying off their debts, at least throughout the duration of salary deduction, which ranges anywhere between three to nine months.

Dominant role of employment agencies

The heavy involvement of private recruitment agencies has led to a number of problems, such as document falsification, inadequate or nonexistence of pre-departure training, overcharging, and deployment to conflict-ridden countries through irregular channels despite the moratoria policies currently in place, among others. Employment agencies continue to play a considerable role even in the current government-to-government (G-to-G) scheme of labor migration between Indonesia and Japan which, despite being highly regulated by the government, leaves some loopholes in its recruitment processes. In 2019, for example, the introduction of the Japanese language proficiency test (JLPT) level N5 as part of the application requirements to work as nurse or care-worker candidate in Japan has made Japanese language learning and test-taking a lucrative business for training centers, which are often owned and run by employment agencies. The absence of regulation on cost structure has left prospective Indonesian migrants vulnerable to frauds and overcharging. There are instances in which prospective migrant workers are charged anywhere between IDR 5,000,000 and IDR 30,000,000 for language courses and miscellaneous fees. The amount paid to employment agencies could be much, much higher–up to IDR 80,000,000–for those seeking to secure employment in the manufacturing sector in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Updated on 24 September 2021.