Ref: SBY membutuhkan restu Arab Saudia, jadi sulit baginya untuk melarang warga NKRI diperbudak di negeri tsb.
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/sby-may-end-ban-on-maids-working-in-saudi-arabia/568060 SBY May End Ban On Maids Working In Saudi Arabia Jakarta Globe | January 28, 2013 President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia and sign an agreement to end the freeze on the recruitment of Indonesian maids there, a Saudi media outlet has reported. An Indonesian official confirmed that Yudhoyono will visit the country on Thursday, but declined to give details about the president’s agenda. “He will visit Saudi Arabia, but I don’t know yet whether there will be an agreement,” P.L.E. Priatna, the director of information and media at the Foreign Ministry, told the Jakarta Globe. Quoting the Saudi Arabian daily Okaz, news portal Emirates 24/7 reported on Sunday that Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have agreed to end a two-year-old dispute that involved Jakarta stopping its citizens from being sent to work as maids in the kingdom, the Middle East’s largest market for Asian domestic helpers. The two sides have supposedly reached a deal following tough negotiations over the past year about maids’ salaries and treatment, along with other conditions set by Indonesia. Saudi Arabia, Okaz reported, has agreed to pay Indonesian maids a monthly salary of between 1,200 and 1,500 Saudi riyals ($320 and $400). The report gave no further details of the agreement. Following several reported cases of maltreatment and violent abuse, Indonesia stopped sending maids to Saudi Arabia in early 2011 after an Indonesian worker was beheaded after being convicted of murdering her Saudi employer. Saudi authorities failed to inform the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh before carrying out the execution. Besides banning workers from being sent to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia currently also prohibits migrant workers from being sent to Jordan. Many female Indonesian domestic workers previously chose to work in Arab countries because they thought fellow Muslims would make ideal employers, though in scores of cases, they were treated effectively as pieces of property and were not given time to pray. In 2010, Migrant Care recorded 5,560 reports of physical and sexual abuse among foreign workers in Saudi Arabia alone, including two cases where a maid leapt from a third floor apartment to escape relentless torture, and another where a body was found in a dumpster. But despite the moratorium, there are still 1.5 million workers employed in the Middle Eastern country, according to data from Indonesia’s Manpower Ministry, making it the second most popular destination for Indonesian workers abroad behind Malaysia. Dozens of Indonesian maids are still on death row in the kingdom. In a recent instance of abuse in the Middle Eastern country, an Indonesian worker, Sulami, returned home to East Java in October after spending more than a week in a Jakarta hospital. She was allegedly hit and kicked by her Saudi employer on a regular basis, in addition to suffering from daily mistreatment. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
