On Thursday, October 20, 2011, Suparman or Arman, Case Handling Staff of Indonesian Migrant Worker Resource Center along with Cardi Syaukani and Wasrun, migrant worker activists from Cirebon, West Java visited office of “Badan Nasional Penempatan dan Perlindungan TKI (BNP2TKI)” or National Board of Indonesian Migrant Worker’s Placement and Protection at Jalan MT Haryono Kav 52, Pancoran, South Jakarta. Three activists who also affiliated with “Jaringan Peduli Buruh Migran Indonesia (Indonesian Migrant Worker Care Network) Mekarwangi” were welcomed by the Head of BNP2TKI, Mr. Jumhur Hidayat. Aside of discussing some works related to migrant protection, on that meeting, Jumhur also adress some BNPTKI’s strategic planning on the protection of Indonesian migrant workers in the future. 

One of the strategy is to implementing a so called biometric technology system for the field staffs or people who used to act as sponsor and facilitate the meeting of migrant worker to be with the company agent. Through the implementation of the system, there will be data inventory and fingerprints record for the field staffs in order to supervise field staffs member in every company agents.

The implementation of this system will reduce human trafficking case which oftentimes happened to Indonesian migrant worker. This system will avoid field staffs on leaving migrant worker’s document to random company agents, except the official one he/she registered to.

For instance: Jumantri, a registered field staff at PT. Dalban Jaya. Jumantri will not be able to submit migrant’s document to other company agent, PT. Bison Sari for instance, since on BNP2TKI’s database, his fingerprints already registered at PT. Dalban Jaya.

Once the system being implemented, it will practically avoid extortion, ID counterfeiting, human trafficking, and avoid huge cost on migration. Currently, many field staffs or panders irresponsibly transfer migrant worker’s documents from one company agent to another according to which one could give them more fee. That is also the reason why company agents compete each other to offer highest fee to field staffs in order to obtain more migrant worker to be sent abroad.

On the other side, higher fee which given to a field staff require higher fee to the migrant worker itself. This fee will be imposed to the workers with pay cuts system. This means the only party with less benefit would be the migrant workers itself.

“We noticed that this is too risky to migrant workers who posses less information on what will happen in the future, since it is really possible that the pander submit migrant’s documents to an irresponsible company agent. Many migrant workers only care about how much paid they would get, less of them took care of what’s gonna happen to themselves and their safety”, said Arman.

Fingerprints record system will also help family of the migrant workers in order to make sure on which company agents that will handle and take care of their family. Name of the company agent will be recorded precisely according to field staff’s authority letter. Nevertheless, there are still some challenges on the implementation  of this system, which is the needs of formal regulation on this matters.

The hopes are, again, lean to the government as the one who has the authority and power to serve to the people. Because even if we own the most sophisticated system on earth, it will be nonsense without a true and honest spirit from the ruling government to have a transparency on implementing any system to serve the nations. 

Arman, activists from Mekarwangi - Case Handling Staff of Indonesian Migrant Worker Resource Center