Unfortunately, good regulations are meaningless if they are not properly executed in the field: “There is no coordination whatsoever between our Central and Regional Government. As painfully seen from the facts of our last election, for example, our government does not even have complete, accurate demographic data that will show them which regions in our country are the poorest. This is important, because illegal migrant workers originate from poor areas where jobs are scarce. However, it is too big for the Government to resolve by itself – they need the committed involvement of civil society. However, civilians have always been considered as “useless baggage” and “milk cows” by the Government over the years. This is unfortunate, because the strength of a nation depends on the strength of its combined civil and military powers, and by cooperating, they can educate, monitoring, and evaluate their fellow Indonesians, so that they can work legally here or abroad for their own sake and for that of our own country,” declared Nukila as the recipient of the 2021 Resilience Fellowship and the Global Initiative against Organized Crime (“GITOC”) award.
“Let me tell you about the time I traveled to Sambas, West Kalimantan. There, I met a lady who was working in Kuching, Malaysia. She was able to work there illegally…precisely because her broker cooperated with crooked officials in the Immigration Office. Among the many horror stories she told me about the illegal employment situation, she knew a migrant worker who sustained constant abuse in their 7 years of working in Malaysia. This is hardly new – over the decades, our migrant workers have suffered from abuse in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines. Where is the Government in all this? You know this is only possible when the Government is not present for their own citizens!”
Nukila is now focusing on freeing the many Indonesian migrant workers who are trapped in their countries of employment, from Malaysia to Hongkong. “Their employers hold onto their papers and documents illegally, so they cannot return to Indonesia. The KBRI –Indonesian Embassies across the world must cooperate with local law enforcement to save these migrant workers. They are our brethren and sisters, and they need our help,” she declared.
To minimize, if not eradicate, the labor and human rights problem of illegal migrant workers, the Government needs to start taking specific steps. Nukila believes that Government-managed job training, business training, and capitalization programs must be created for these women in our poor areas to empower them and to allow them to make money for their families while participating actively in the national economy. Allowing them to remain in poverty is both immoral and financially unwise, as the Government both loses possible earnings from these citizens and must spend a lot to rescue them from the clutches of criminal syndicates and employers – especially if they are employed abroad.
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“This is a problem that is prevalent in multiple villages in all of Indonesia’s provinces. Therefore, we should take a page from the book of our national heroine, Raden Ayu Kartini, and provide equal access to education for our women. Not only educated women earn more for themselves and their family, they will also educate their children into good, prosperous adults who shore up our country. Or as I prefer to say it, women are champions for their children,” she declared. “It takes a great intent for the Government to set up such a program and implement it properly. After all, the Government is the primary stakeholder of our country, and it has human resources from the Center to the Regions.”
