They had been abandoned for months in Abu Dhabi due to the enforcement of new regulations for illegal foreign workers in UAE. The UAE government has given them amnesty in order to return to their home country.Jumhur Hidayat, Head of the Indonesian Workers Placement and Protection Agency, said that now the homecoming process in still ongoing in stages. "It's still in process. The return will be in stages," he told Tempo yesterday (7/10).
"Perhaps the data regarding 160 people will be reduced or even increased, because the UAE government regulation will continues to be applied," said Jumhur.The UAE government issued a prohibition for employers to illegally employ foreign workers, including Indonesian female migrant workers.
Employers who violate the new regulation will be fined and imprisoned. The effect of this is that a lot of employers have expelled female migrant workers from their houses.This is despite, according to Jumhur, the Indonesian workers having entered UAE via legal procedures. However, some of them changed their employers without confirmation or violated contracts. "So the first employer, who had the workers' Indonesian passport, gave back the documents to Indonesian embassy," he said.
Comments