Jakarta (WNAM MONITORING): Deputy Minister for Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers Christina Aryani discussed increasing the placement and protection of migrant workers in Japan during a meeting with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
This is necessary considering reports of several cases involving the exploitation of Indonesian migrant workers in Japan, both those leaving under the independent scheme (special skilled workers/SSW) as well as those participating in internship programs.
“We are mandated to ensure that there is no more exploitation of migrant workers,” Aryani said in a statement released on Monday.
In line with President Prabowo Subianto’s directive to increase remittances, she affirmed that the government is continuing to strive to increase the number of placements of Indonesian migrant workers in various countries, including Japan.
“We have mapped, and one of the interesting placement countries—and we see that it can still be explored further—is Japan. We see that Japan is also one of the favorite destinations for Indonesian migrant workers,” she added.
She described the government-to-government scheme for the placement of health workers and nurses as quite interesting.
However, building competency and language skills is important to take advantage of this opportunity.
Therefore, she urged health polytechnics and institutes of health science to start including Japanese in their curriculum.
“So when they (health workers and nurses) graduate, they do not start from zero for their Japanese language competency,” she explained.
She further highlighted the migrant worker placement system in Japan.
She considered the placement scheme through migrant worker placement companies to be more secure compared to leaving independently or getting recruited by agencies from abroad to schools.
“There is a guarantee of protection for migrant workers that we can ensure is fulfilled,” she said.
Human resource development is also one of the focuses of the cooperation between the Indonesian government and JICA, which has been running since 2016.
The development of the cooperation covers the human resources forum, support for health polytechnics in Indonesia, technical internship training, postgraduate studies, and improving health professionals and empowering migrant workers who have worked in Japan.
