The Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia Reopens Starting August 1, 2022

The Indonesian government has reopened the flow of Indonesian migrant workers (PMI) to Malaysia starting August 1, 2022. Previously, the dispatch of PMIs to Malaysia was temporarily halted mid-last month due to the Malaysian government's violation of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on PMI recruitment signed on April 1, 2022.

The resumption of PMI deployment to Malaysia follows a joint statement signed by Indonesian Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah and Malaysian Minister of Human Resources M Saravanan regarding the implementation of the MoU on the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers in the Domestic Sector in Malaysia.

With the reopening of PMI deployment to Malaysia, supervision of PMI safety must also be strengthened to prevent further tragic stories of Indonesian workers abroad. As is known, some Indonesian workers have been unpaid, abused, or even returned home only in name after seeking their fortune in a foreign country.

For information, Malaysia remains the primary destination for Indonesian migrant workers. Based on data from Bank Indonesia (BI), as of March 2022, 1.63 million workers (49.7%) of the total were earning a living in Malaysia.

However, over the past decade, the number of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia has shown a downward trend, as seen in the graph. In 2013, the number of PMIs in Malaysia reached 1.94 million workers. However, by March 2022, this had fallen to only 1.63 million workers. The largest decrease occurred in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching 250,000 workers in 2020.