Future Looks Bleak for Laid-Off Indonesian Workers

http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=49329

WEST JAVA, Indonesia - Ida Farida, 33, never imagined she would lose the job that she had held for 10 years.

In November 2008, she felt as if a bomb dropped when her company, Omedata Electronics, in Bandung, West Java, announced that it was closing down its computer parts factory, where she had worked as a machine operator. Having been hit by the global financial crisis, the firm had to let go of 1,301 employees, including Farida.

"It was really shocking, especially because my husband had no stable job," she said.

Although Farida's salary was just slightly above the monthly minimum wage of 939,000 rupiah (US$ 100), it was quite enough to take care of her family's needs, since they did not have to pay rent for their house - a tiny tenement owned by her in-laws and located in a crowded alley in southern Bandung, close to the factory.

Farida's job had provided a safety net for her family - her three-year-old daughter and husband Rudi - who has been out of a permanent job since 1998, when the textile factory he was working for closed down as a result of the 1997 financial crisis that affected the Asian region. Unable to land another permanent employment, Rudi has been taking on odd jobs that pay little and are for the most part unstable. On worse days, he comes home with nothing in his pockets.

A year since the layoff, Farida has yet to find another job. Her severance pay of 26 million rupiah (US$ 2,773) is steadily running out. The computer rental shop in which she invested a portion of her severance pay has turned out to be losing venture.

"People rarely come to play video games anymore," she said, sighing. "People around here are also affected by the layoff, as most of them are factory workers."

Many of her former colleagues are also finding it extremely difficult to get another job. "Maybe because most of us are over 30 years old and only high school graduates," Farida explained.

The global financial recession that struck last year following the collapse of the US's financial giant Lehman Brothers triggered a chain of reaction that included depressed demand for Asian goods and services from the developed world.

But unlike other countries, Indonesia was relatively unscathed by the crisis, since its economy relies mostly on the domestic market instead of exports. Still, the crisis has trimmed demand and slumped prices of Indonesia's export products, including textiles, coal, palm oil, rubber and fabricated goods, which push companies to make adjustments by reducing the size of their workforce.

According to the Indonesian Employers Association at least 222,500 workers were dismissed as of March 2009. Those in the garment, plantations and forestry industries have been the hardest hit, since Indonesia is the world's biggest palm oil producer and the world's second biggest rubber maker.

The Indonesian Labor Union Confederation has warned that some 300,000 migrant workers would return to Indonesia after their contracts run out this year, as host countries are still feeling the pinch of the crisis.

To help industries particularly hit by the economic slowdown and prevent them from resorting to massive layoffs, the government has set aside a 73.3-trillion rupiah (7.8 billion U.S. dollars) stimulus package. This is on top of other mitigating measures such as the conduct of vocational and entrepreneurial skills training as well as efforts to provide green jobs, which refer to those types of work that contribute substantially to protecting or restoring the environment, including those in agriculture.

The Labor Union Confederation said that the stimulus program could more effectively help cushion the impact of the financial crisis if applied in the rural areas to create the needed infrastructure and boost their economies.


Amid the growing wave of employee dismissals, seeming dissatisfaction with existing measures to ensure workers keep their jobs has prompted some sectors to question even the International Labor Organization (ILO), specifically on the extent to which it is helping workers. The manpower and transmigration ministry said ILO's role could be improved.

ILO country representative in Indonesia, Alan Boulton, played down the criticism, saying that the country needed to improve its social security system to protect workers from layoffs.

"Companies need to find alternative ways to reduce labor costs without losing their skilled workforce. This can be done through shorter working hours, giving more training to workers and instituting a coordinated disbursement of the government's fiscal stimulus," he said.

Until more effective solutions are in place, or the state of the economy improves significantly, many laid-off workers may not expect to get new jobs or get their old ones back.

Asep Suryana, 38, is hopeful, though, that the company that sacked him and tens of other workers four months ago would give restore to them their jobs. "The union is still approaching the management so that we can rejoin the company," said Suryana, who worked for nine years as a mechanic at Metro Parcel Service, a transportation firm in Bandung.

Today, he works as a construction worker just to make end meet. He fears that chances are slim that he will be able to go back to his old company, but he remains hopeful.

"I need to get my job back," declared Suryana, whose only son is entering junior high school soon. "We need a lot of money for his education. I don’t want him to end up like me, working menial jobs," Suryana said.

Farida wants another job, but not so much for her as for her husband, saying she prefers to stay home and look after their daughter.

"Do you know any job opening for him?" she asked in a desperate tone.

Posted by hera at 4:14 AM | Permalinks | Comments

For Indonesian Pilgrims, the Path to Mecca is Paved With Problems

http://thejakartaglobe.com/home/for-indonesian-pilgrims-the-path-to-mecca-is-paved-with-problems/341553

The heat was excruciating as the first batch of hajj pilgrims entered the transit dormitory in East Jakarta a day before their flight to Saudi Arabia on Oct. 23. But the pilgrims, mostly of retirement age, welcomed the heat, joking that it would prepare them for the harsh desert climate in Mecca.

They were generally joyful, some having waited decades for their turn to go on the hajj, whose participants are limited by both money and a yearly quota from the Saudi Arabian government.

“We have saved up our money for years, and our four children also chipped in. We signed up for the pilgrimage in 2007 and finally got our turn to go this year,” said Ratna Farida, 61, a retired teacher from Pesanggrahan, South Jakarta. Together with her husband Asri Munir, 70, they purchased the regular hajj package for Rp 35 million ($3,675) each.

A total of 207,000 Indonesians will do the hajj pilgrimage this year, around the same as in 2008. They are divided into 470 groups bound for Jeddah, where most spend a month performing the hajj ritual, with the last group expected home in late November.

First-timers Ratna and Asri said they were content with the organization and service as they prepared to embark, but others who were going for a second time said they were confused by the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ management of the pilgrimage.

Yani Yahya, 61, said new regulations requiring pilgrims to have an official international passport, rather than a one-time-only special hajj passport, had forced her to make repeated trips to her local immigration office to process paperwork.

“There is no information available either, unless you’re very proactive. Back in 2003, all we had to do was sit at home and wait for the instructions and passport to arrive,” said Yani, a widow traveling by herself.

Another veteran pilgrim, Ahmad Golyobi, 58, was also upset, saying that procedures such as the registration process were lengthy and bureaucratic.

“Also, the ministry organizers distributed the book of prayers, which is not available freely, only after we finished the manasik (hajj rehearsal). There were 14 meetings for the manasik and they only gave us [the book] when it was already finished,” he said.

“How can we memorize all the prayers if there is no book? The government cannot even manage a very simple thing like that,” Ahmad said.

But both Yani and Ahmad, as with many pilgrims, accept the flaws as a test from God, saying that the spiritual journey is a lesson in shedding one’s ego.

Others are not so forgiving.

Complaints, Complaints
For years, the hajj management has been a lightning rod for criticism, mostly that it’s unprofessional, not transparent and prone to corruption. Every year, Indonesia sends hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Saudi Arabia, and problems invariably arise, mostly relating to housing, transportation and catering.

Many pilgrims are placed in lodgings far away from places of worship, and often waste hours waiting around for transportation. The catering also leaves a lot to be desired. One pilgrim said that when she went in 2005, the meals were the same every day: rice and string beans.

During the hajj between December 2006 and January 2007, the pilgrims’ rituals were disrupted when a local caterer stopped delivering meals after officials from the Ministry of Religious Affairs tried to bargain down the catering bill. More than 3,000 pilgrims were forced to live off dates and instant noodles for several days. Some of them fainted due to inadequate food intake.

Dissatisfied customers compare the treatment of Indonesian pilgrims to those from Malaysia, who pay a similar amount for the hajj package but receive much better service. They are placed in better lodgings close to worship sites, receive better meals and transportation and even get a refund if the cost of the hajj ends up being cheaper than what they initially paid.

New problems for pilgrims have emerged this year, including delays in passports, being forced to pay for free-of-charge vaccines and luggage and more housing issues.

It has been discovered that around 260 out of 407 lodging sites booked for pilgrims have, as of Nov. 1, been unable to pass a new Saudi Arabian safety audit concerning the lack of emergency stairwells. As a result, 6,000 pilgrims risk being forced to lodge in houses even further away from places of worship.

The Ministry of Religious Affairs down plays the problems.

“Don’t worry, we’ll sort this out. Every pilgrim will be placed in decent housing. If the places are far away and cheaper, we will return the margin,” said Abdul Ghafur Djawahir, director of administration for the hajj.

Legislator Said Abdullah, a member of the House of Representatives Commission VIII overseeing religious affairs, said the new Saudi housing regulation was announced in June 2008, but the Ministry of Religious Affairs failed to react.

“The government doesn’t plan well. They never think of a Plan B,” said Said, a harsh critic of hajj management.

Then there’s the allegations of corruption. In July, Indonesia Corruption Watch released a report saying the ministry may have inflated the actual cost of the 2009 pilgrimage by around $700 per person. It submitted the report to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which in early November sent a three-person team to Saudi Arabia to monitor hajj management.

The KPK has already identified a number of irregularities, including unexpected fees and higher lodging costs.

The ministry denies the accusations by ICW, saying its calculations are different than theirs.

“Besides, people aren’t aware of the many indirect costs for the hajj, such as airport tax, the salaries of staff serving the pilgrims, and so on,” Ghafur claimed.

“And while flights are cheaper … [closer and higher quality] accommodation means that the costs for each pilgrim had to be increased.”

Nonetheless, there’s no denying that the ministry has been beset by irregularities. In 2006, former Minister of Religious Affairs Said Agil Hussein Al Munawar and hajj director general Taufiq Kamil were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for embezzling more than Rp 75 billion in pilgrimage funds between 2001 and 2004. Both have since been paroled.

Also in 2006, ICW reported the Religious Affairs Ministry to the KPK for allegedly misusing money from a hajj fund, including for travel allowances for members of House Commission VIII for law and legislation, and transport allowances for a House working committee. The group had previously reported the ministry to the KPK for discrepancies involving payments to then-minister Maftuh Basyuni.

Ade Irawan of ICW said the allegations against Basyuni were similar to those that landed Munawar in prison, and that the KPK was still investigating its reports.

What Needs to Be Fixed?
Ghafur said it was not easy organizing 200,000 pilgrims every year, sorting out lodging and transportation and competing with other countries to get the most convenient housing.

“Although we are the largest pilgrim group in the world, we don’t get any privileges. If we did, then other countries would also ask for them,” he said.

He went on to blame the Saudi government for frequently changing hajj regulations, such as airport service fees, the new passport requirement and most recently housing safety regulations.

Lawmaker Abdul Kadir Karding, the head of House Commission VIII, said the government seemed to lack diplomatic skills in lobbying the Saudi government about hajj-related problems, despite seemingly to have a strong bargaining position.

“Why isn’t there more permanent housing, like renting for 10 years, for example, which should decrease the housing problems pilgrims experience almost every year?” Karding said.

Then there was the transparency issue. Abdullah said the handling of hajj payments was unfair, such as the requirement that pilgrims pay a Rp 20 million deposit to be placed on the waiting list. This money can sit in an interest-bearing bank account for up to five years while the pilgrim awaits his turn.

“There are trillions of rupiah, and 80 percent of the interest earned is used to pay government staff who handle the pilgrimage, to pay for their uniforms, salary and so on. Why should the pilgrims also pay for those costs?” Abdullah said. “When we ask the ministry about this, they never give us a clear answer,” he said, adding that the House was not given sufficient access to monitor the hajj management.

Firdaus Ilyas, ICW’s coordinator for central data and analysis, said the Religious Affairs Ministry leaves itself at the mercy of its business partners for the hajj, such as Garuda Indonesia Airlines, which is the sole carrier of Indonesian pilgrims.

“In terms of accommodation and catering, the chain of business that needs to be dealt with is long, making the whole process expensive. The ministry lacks professionalism and a good system,” he said.

He added that the Law on Hajj Pilgrimage Management was too technical and did not clearly outline pilgrims’ rights.

Said wanted to see the central government establish an independent and professional hajj financial institution, rather than leaving it to a ministry.

“Since the Saudi government only wants to deal with governments, then the government can focus on handling the diplomacy, while everything else can be processed by the institution.”

Meanwhile, Sudaryatmo, a member of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation, questioned why the central government was even involved in organizing and managing the hajj given that Indonesia isn’t an Islamic country.

“They shouldn’t be pushing the doctrine that the pilgrimage is a time to shed one’s ego and that pilgrims must be patient. It makes consumers reluctant to complain, for fear it will reduce the value of their religious service,” he said.

Posted by hera at 6:36 PM | Permalinks | Comments