KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 ― Indonesian President Joko Widodo must work towards ending the stigmatisation and discrimination of the country’s migrant workers in Malaysia during his visit starting today, a civil society group said yesterday.
The Indonesian organisation called Migrant Care also urged Joko to protest against the recent Malaysian advertisement telling buyers of a robotic vacuum to “fire your Indonesian maid”, which the country’s media has labelled as “racist” and “hurtful”.
“The incident of RoboVac Malaysia’s cleaner advertisement that insulted and belittled the dignity of Indonesian migrant domestic workers must be made a protest to be stated by Joko to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak,” Migrant Care said in a press statement.
“The event was not the first of its kind, but a recurring one. President Joko’s strict action hopefully will end an era of stigmatisation and discrimination against Indonesian migrant labour which has so far been ignored.”
This stigmatisation, it said, included the derogatory term “Indon” commonly used by Malaysians.
The group listed down four pressing issues that Joko must resolve, including Malaysia’s seriousness to defend the rights of Indonesian workers, and ending the criminalisation of undocumented migrant workers ― millions of which were the backbone of Malaysian economy.
Migrant Care also urged Malaysia to provide access to education and health to tens of thousands of the workers’ children.
Yesterday, the Indonesian government said it delivered a protest note to the Malaysian Foreign Ministry to demand a ban against the advertisement by RoboVac Malaysia in both its physical and online forms.
Indonesian maids had formed nearly 90 per cent of the Malaysia’s domestic helpers before the 2009 moratorium here, but remain the most popular supplier of such workers to Malaysia due to similar language and other cultural habits.
The freeze was lifted in 2011, but employers still have difficulty obtaining Indonesian workers due to scarcity and high costs.
