Why leave? It's the only way

Four in five Indonesians working overseas are women, and many go away again and again. This is the story of Sugiyani, who keeps leaving her little girl behind, whose husband blew her hard-earned savings, who dreams that her next job will be her last.



CENTRAL JAVA - MS SUGIYANI'S decision to be a migrant maid yet again had been four months in the making.

The sum the family had borrowed from relatives for household expenses had crept beyond three million rupiah ($497). She decided they could no longer count on Mr Warsun's occasional earnings of 30,000 rupiah a day as an ad hoc construction worker or farmer's help.

The couple took stock and sold the motorbike bought with her earnings from the two years she had worked as a maid in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

With the five million rupiah from the bike, they paid off their debt. The remainder will be used to renovate the well-worn kitchen in the single-storey brick house they share with Mr Warsun's mother and her second husband. The house was built with the older woman's earnings as a maid in Saudi Arabia for six years.

Ms Sugiyani had been home from Jeddah for barely seven months when she found herself toying with the idea of heading for Singapore.

She went to her regular recruiter and took the first steps to a new life as one of 60,000 Indonesian maids in Singapore.

'The only way is for me to work in Singapore,' she said.

'My husband does not have a stable job. And with the price of rice being very high now, he doesn't earn enough money to feed us.'

Migrant workers the world over struggle with that mix of hard-headed calculation and complex emotion.

In Indonesia - as elsewhere - poverty is the key push behind the army of over four million migrant workers spread out over the Middle East and Asia.

More than 80 per cent of them are women in low-skilled jobs, yet they sent home US$3.4 billion (S$5.2 billion) last year, earning the second-largest amount of foreign exchange for Indonesia after oil and gas revenue.

Ms Sri Palupi, head of the non-governmental Institute of Ecosoc Rights in Jakarta, has done research on Indonesian migrant workers. She said: 'Most who work overseas come from families who do not own land or have only very small plots.

'Also, there is a lack of jobs outside the agriculture sector. And when there are jobs in agriculture, they pay very little. All this while the living cost keeps rising.'

While some academic studies have noted that women migrants leave home for a mix of motivations - family pressure, a desire to escape soured marriages and the humdrum village life, or even a wish to see the world - poverty gives the fundamental push.

An Asian Development Bank survey last year, in five major Indonesian provinces from which migrant workers pour out, found that most leave 'to be free from poverty' (37 per cent) and because of 'the lack of employment opportunities in the country' (37 per cent).

In contrast, pastures further afield look lush with promise.

Jakarta-based Mr Albert Bonasahat, national coordinator of the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) project on migrant workers in South-east Asia, said: 'Would-be migrant workers see that their relatives or neighbours who are working abroad are able to change their lives - new houses, motorbikes. So, they too think that working overseas is the only way to have a better life.'

In Indonesia, where unemployment stands at about 10 per cent, the export of workers has been a state-backed policy since the 1980s.

Jakarta, which has recently stated it wants to up labour export numbers, openly acknowledges the twin benefits of sending workers out: It reduces non-employment and brings in remittance money.

Walking through a village in Temanggung, Central Java, the benefits of working overseas are plain to see.

Pointing at some of the smarter-looking houses, a recruiter rattles off: 'That one, wife in Hong Kong, husband in Malaysia. This one, wife in Saudi Arabia, husband at home. Five years already. And that house there, she's working in Taiwan.'

It is the same at many more villages in this agricultural heart of Indonesia. Somehow, the vast rice terraces of Temanggung, the chilli and tapioca plots in Banyumas, and the ocean catch of coastal Cilicap are not enough to keep people at home.

In some villages, there are few women in their 20s. They are often the ones who have left and are most in demand as maids and caregivers in the Middle East and Asia.

In 2004, 83 per cent of Indonesian migrant workers were women. They left behind their husbands, children and elderly parents.

The men who do not go off to work in South Korea's factories and on Malaysia's construction sites stay home to earn a meagre wage tilling other people's land or selling food off a cart.

Goodbye, goodbye...again and again

ON A Thursday morning at the government's Manpower and Transmigration Department in Purwokerto city - a 10-hour drive east of Jakarta - would-be migrant workers milled around waiting for the documents that will let them leave for a job overseas.

Department coordinator Handoyo Pramudhito said that 95 per cent of the 945 migrant workers from the area who went through his office last year for jobs overseas were women.

'They just want to improve their families' lives,' he said.

Stashed in recruiter Machsun Imron's office desk drawer is a log of his daily efforts driving around Temanggung looking for women to be maids overseas.

He repeats his sales pitch again and again: 'Singapore is very good. Don't worry, Singapore Government will take care of you if there is bad employer. Newspaper will report.'

He recruits 20 to 30 women a month and drives them to a maid agency and training centre in Jakarta.

Mr Machsun will not let on how much he is paid for each woman he produces, but his house is the grandest in his village - complete with pond, landscaped garden, verandah, oil paintings and artefacts.

Other village recruiters said they get 1.5 million rupiah per hire, and this is part of what the women themselves pay back through salary deductions once they start working overseas.

Mr Machsun's hardcover notebook has page after page filled with passport photographs of young women. Inked next to their pictures are their names, ages, education level, date of departure and destinations - Malaysia, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Singapore.

The recruiters grumble that with so many young women already gone, there is not much fresh blood left.

Maid agency owner James Loing said: 'Sometimes, six or 10 recruiters try to get the same woman.'

It is not difficult to convince the women who have previously worked abroad to go overseas yet again. As Ms Sugiyani did, many often seek out the recruiters themselves. They are labelled 'Ex'.

'Ex-Malaysia, ex-Singapore and now going to Hong Kong,' a recruiter said, introducing the smiling Inah Suraji, 32, waiting for her papers to be processed at an agency.

She is saving for her two teenage daughters' education, she said in simple English learnt from four years in Singapore.

'The money I earned, no more already. Get money very difficult, but use very fast,' the bone-thin woman said with a laugh.

Like so many other repeat migrant workers, she appears caught in a cycle of departure and return.

The money earned abroad runs out quickly. After building the smart family house, buying a sparkling new motorbike and covering food and daily necessities, it is soon time to go out to earn again.

Walk by the most lavish village houses, complete with Roman pillars, floor-to-ceiling windows and a coat of fresh paint and, chances are, they belong to villagers who slogged for many years in Hong Kong or Taiwan, where the pay is higher than in Singapore or Malaysia.

In some villages, every family has several women working overseas.

Ms Lotte Kejser, chief technical adviser of the ILO's project on migrant workers in South-east Asia, said: 'If they are required to earn a livelihood to support their extended family, the family may put pressure on them to go overseas again to continue this support.

'The workers themselves might find it increasingly hard to reintegrate into their villages and there's no well-paid job for them there.'

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FOUR MILLION MIGRANT WORKERS, 80 PER CENT WOMEN, $5 BILLION SENT HOME

In Indonesia - as elsewhere - poverty is the key push behind the army of over four million migrant workers spread out over the Middle East and Asia. More than 80 per cent of them are women in low-skilled jobs, yet they sent home US$3.4 billion (S$5.2 billion) last year, earning the second-largest amount of foreign exchange for Indonesia after oil and gas revenue.

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THE PEER PULL

"Would-be migrant workers see that their relatives or neighbours who are working abroad are able to change their lives - new houses, motorbikes. So, they too think that working overseas is the only way to have a better life."
JAKARTA-BASED MR ALBERT BONASAHAT, national coordinator of the International Labour Organisation's project on migrant workers in South-East Asia.