Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia Decline Since the Pandemic

The number of Indonesian Migrant Workers (IMWs) working in Malaysia has shown a downward trend since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Based on data from Bank Indonesia (BI) and BNP2TKI, in the first quarter of 2019, there were approximately 1.9 million IMWs in Malaysia.

This number decreased to 1.74 million at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic and continued to decline, as shown in the graph, reaching 1.63 million at the end of the first quarter of 2022.

This represents a 0.17% decrease compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, marking the lowest level during the pandemic.

In the first quarter of 2022, IMWs working in Malaysia accounted for 49.7% of the total number of IMWs working abroad, which was 3.27 million.

Remittances from IMWs working in Malaysia in the first three months of 2022 reached US$638.35 million. Throughout 2021, they transferred US$3.06 billion to their families in Indonesia.

In April 2022, the Indonesian and Malaysian governments signed a memorandum of understanding on the placement and protection of domestic IMWs in Malaysia. This memorandum includes an agreement that the placement of IMWs in the domestic sector will be conducted through the One-Channel Placement System (SPSK) established by Indonesia.

However, the Indonesian government recently discovered evidence that Malaysia has not fully complied with this agreement and is still using the online maid system (SMO) managed by the Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs. With the SMO system, the Indonesian government is unable to monitor the wages, placement locations, and conditions of IMWs working there.

Due to this finding, Indonesia has decided to halt the sending of IMWs to Malaysia starting in July 2022 until further notice.