Govt Asked to Optimize Agreement on Worker

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - The International Labor Organization (ILO) is encouraging the Indonesian government to make an optimum use of bilateral and multilateral agreements to better protect its migrant workers abroad.

"In the past two decades, Indonesia has become one of the world's biggest migrant worker suppliers. Therefore, migrant workers are important part of the Indonesian manpower that the government must protect by among others benefiting from bilateral and multilateral agreements," ILO Deputy Director for Indonesia Michiko Miyamoto said here on Wednesday.

As the world's second largest migrant worker supplier, Indonesia every year sends around 700 thousand migrant workers abroad, particularly to East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Nearly 78 percent of the migrant workers are employed as domestic helpers, she said.

"Although the migrant domestic helpers are Indonesia's second foreign exchange earner, many of these "foreign exchange heroes"  suffer from exploitation and torture during migration process, both in Indonesia and abroad," she said. (*/DWA)