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Vaudine England

A fresh attempt to solve one of the biggest problems facing Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong will be made today when workers' representatives and Indonesian consular officials meet.
Inside the consulate, officials will offer a new draft of a regulation that has brought hundreds of workers into the streets in protest. Outside, some of those workers will continue to  protest  until the regulation is scrapped.
The workers are upset over a new regulation - No 2258 - which prohibits workers from changing their employment agency for the first two years of their time here.
The consulate says it wants to help protect migrant workers from the fees and risks involved in changing employment agencies.
'I will make a win-win situation between the migrant workers and my office,' Consul General Sukmo Yuwono  says.
The workers say the new rule has the effect of entrenching an illegal, exploitative rip-off that is forcing some workers to pay almost all of their salaries to the agencies for at least seven months  after arrival here.
'The Indonesian consulate's decision to stand by Letter of Order No 2258 shows that it chooses to hold on to their lies on protection, serve the interests of recruitment agencies, and deny the rights of Indonesian migrant workers,' says Eni Lestari Andayani Adi, co-ordinator of the United Indonesians Against Overcharging.
'The consulate said that the policy is for our protection. This is, in principle and in practice, a lie. How can it be [for our protection] if it ties us to recruitment agencies who overcharge us, keep us heavily in debt and put us in a vulnerable employment situation?'
The consulate denies siding with the agencies against the workers. Mr Sukmo says the regulation will be changed to include new requirements for the agencies to follow the law, to stop overcharging, and to provide guarantees to the consulate that they are not charging excessive fees. 'We are making very, very big progress regarding the regulation,' he says.
But, say the migrant workers, some agencies are trapping Indonesians in an endless cycle of debt and poverty, in ways that are hard to prove in court despite Hong Kong's laws designed to avoid precisely such abuses.
The workers' groups - dozens of which are growing throughout the  community of nearly 120,000 Indonesian workers here - say the problem often starts on the first visit to the bank. A newly arrived migrant worker will be taken by an employment agent to open a bank account. Then the agency will demand a fee of HK$21,000, to be paid off over seven months.
Given the minimum allowable wage is HK$3,480, a simple sum shows a freshly arrived migrant worker will be left with barely enough to survive on, let alone anything to send back home.
The worker is often paying the amount off to the bank, not to the employment agent, making prosecution through the Labour Tribunal that much harder. Or the agent insists on payment in cash.
Compounding the issue  is the practice of some agencies  of holding the worker's personal documents.
The new regulation prevents the migrant worker from escaping that trap, say  worker representatives.
'It makes sure that those agencies now get their HK$21,000,' says Ario Adityo, an Indonesian working with the Asian Migrant Centre, an international NGO with consultative status at the United Nations. 'But the Hong Kong employment ordinance specifies that the maximum agency fee be 10 per cent of the salary.'
Ms Lestari alleges that the consulate's intention is not to protect  workers, but  employment agencies.
'In this situation, it is very clear that the profit of unscrupulous recruitment agencies is what the consulate really wishes to protect,' she says.
The HK$21,000 fee is legal under Indonesian law,  but groups here are campaigning to stop overcharging, in line with international practice.
'The protection that we want is to be free from overcharging of recruiters,' Ms Lestari says.
'What the Indonesian consulate must do is to allow direct hiring and seriously address unjust and illegal practices of recruiters. We will not stop until our demands are met.'
Proving the abuses is difficult. One way to get evidence of the scam is to give  the migrant worker a secret recorder and record conversations between her and the agent, but this and other attempts to demand receipts and records can be terrifying and sometimes dangerous.
Cases have also taken place in which an agency will cancel a worker's contract once the HK$21,000 is paid,  forcing the worker to leave Hong Kong, or start a new job search with little money and no home.
Workers' groups sent a formal letter asking for a public dialogue with consular staff on January 13, but say they've received no reply. A meeting was then held on January 24, but it broke up in disarray. Since then they have held a protest march of several hundred workers.
Some workers say they have hope in the Consul-General will help them. 'He was very helpful when he was the citizen protection officer in the consulate,' says one. Growing anger is fuelling other, more hard-line, efforts, however. One group plans to camp outside the consulate in a tent, regardless of how cold the weather may get. 'Why are we working in Hong Kong just to make the agencies rich?' says one worker.
Even before the regulation  was instituted this year, Indonesian  workers were  having trouble making ends meet, let alone saving to send money home. An Asian Migrant Centre study has shown that 22 per cent of  such workers are underpaid.
The new regulation also hurts Hong Kong employers, says travel agent Sebastian Lau, who has met a lot of Indonesian migrant workers while running day tours to Shenzhen on Sundays.
'This new regulation affects all employers in Hong Kong,' he said. 'It doesn't allow domestic workers to change agencies. If they have no choice, the employer also has no choice.'



Indonesian migrant workers fight for fairness