RI MIGRANT WORKERS NEED SAFE HOUSES ABROAD : COMMISSION

Jakarta, Jan 29 (ANTARA) - Indonesia's National Commission on Violence Against Women has urged the government to build migrant worker protection infrastructures around the world.

The Commission's Coordinator Ninik Rahayu said here Friday the government needs to set up comprehensive services for the migrant workers, including providing them with safe houses in every destination country.

"But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's first 100 days program has yet to protect migrant workers with this sort of systematic policy, like providing them with good safe houses," she said.

The safe houses that female workers undergoing physical violence badly need were ideally built at strategic locations in the destination countries, Rahayu said.

In building the safe houses, the government needs to consider the number of on-duty officials at the embassies or consulates and migrant workers, she said.

The government also needed to encourage local authorities to have gender perspectives and strong commitment to protecting the Indonesian workers who became victims of violence, she said.

Meanwhile, the Commission's Coordinator for Migrant Worker Protection Yuniyanti Chuzaifah said Indonesia needs to ratify the international convention on protecting migrant workers and their families' rights.

The 1990's convention ratification would be a reference for improving Indonesia's migrant workers-related laws and regulations in accordance with the international standards of human rights, she said.

By doing so, Indonesia would have strong bargaining positions in negotiating with the destination countries and could also push them to make common migrant worker protection regulations, she added.

Indonesia is one of the world's casual workforce exporters.

Its migrant workers do not only fill the casual workforce markets in the Middle Eastern countries but also in Asia, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong (China).

In Malaysia, more than a million Indonesians were working in such sectors as construction and plantations.

The Indonesian foreign ministry reported that about eighty percent of 2,116 troubled migrant workers who had recently returned to Indonesia from the Middle East had stopped working because they had not been receiving their salaries.

Besides that, some other Indonesian workers also got sexual abuses and physical violence from their employers.