Indonesia

(New York) - Indonesian and Malaysian ministers meeting in Kuala Lumpur today should ensure that pending revisions to a labor pact include a minimum wage and stronger oversight of recruitment fees, Human Rights Watch said. The two governments have indicated their agreement to revise a 2006 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow domestic workers to keep their passports and have a weekly day of rest, but negotiations have stalled on a minimum wage.

Indonesia's migrant workers experience labour rights abuses in Southeast Asia and the Middle East that would simply not be tolerated by trade unions in Indonesia. Some of the problems they face are the result of regulatory failure in Indonesia itself. Others are created by host governments, which deny migrant workers fair protection under labour laws and impose discriminatory - and often very arbitrary - conditions on their right to stay and work.

Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Lebanon and Saudi Arabia have agreed to improve protection of Indonesian migrant workers employed in the Middle East countries.

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar had visited the four countries and discussed efforts to protect Indonesia’s migrant workers, Secretary of the Directorate General for Workers' Training and Placement, Abdul Malik Harahap, said Tuesday.

Mobile members of the community are at greater risk of contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but are often the ones who suffer from neglect.

According to the UNAIDS report on HIV Transmission in Intimate Partner Relationships in Asia, there is an “unprecedented mobility and migration” of populations in the region, fueled by robust and consistent economic growth in the past decade, which is likely to continue in future.

Members of these populations are more vulnerable to HIV than members of static populations, the report released last week states.

JAKARTA: Activists are calling on all household workers to stop working and march in the streets during the nationwide strike called for May 1-3 to push for the formulation and passage of the domestic worker law.

“This protest [is against] the government and the House of Representatives for not responding to our demands on the law,” Lita Anggraini, Domestic Workers Advocacy Network (Jala PRT) coordinator, said during a press conference on the domestic workers law on Monday in Jakarta.

Lawmakers from House of Representatives Commission IX overseeing health, manpower and transmigration promised on Sunday to pass a law this year to protect the rights of Indonesia’s four million domestic workers.