INDONESIA A NEWS

Indonesia is looking to stop sending its nationals to work as maids abroad by 2017, under a "roadmap" it is drawing up to reform and formalise its domestic worker sector. Under the Domestic Worker Roadmap 2017, it wants to ensure maids are treated like other workers when they work abroad - earning minimum wages, getting leave and working fixed hours, for example. The plan is part of a larger aim to raise the skills of the thousands of Indonesians going overseas to work, according to the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry. If it is carried out, however, it could mean a massive shortage of maids for places like Singapore and Malaysia, both of which rely heavily on domestic workers from Indonesia. Indonesians account for almost half of Singapore's 200,000-plus maids, and 80 per cent of Malaysia's 350,000 maids. "Under the roadmap, we target zero sending out of domestic maids," Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar was quoted by news report...

Draft legislation to redenominate Indonesia's currency is expected to gain momentum this year as lawmakers and monetary authorities push to drop the last three zeros from the nominal value of the rupiah. While the paper change will be largely cosmetic, analysts are divided on whether a redenomination could spark inflation and sow confusion among the public.  The rupiah currently trades at 9,200 to the US dollar and is the second-lowest priced currency in the world, trailing only the Vietnamese dong. The rupiah collapsed amid the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and despite economic and financial recovery still trades at a fraction of its pre-crisis value.  Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said last month that the government was prepared to submit the draft law to the House of Representatives (DPR) for approval. The central bank, Bank Indonesia, has backed the move for various reasons, including the need to simplify accounting standards for transactions that now often excee...

The year 2011 was a tumultuous one for the island of New Guinea, the world's second-largest and perhaps most politically divided island. Papua New Guinea (PNG), the independent country on the island's eastern half, suffered from a four-month political standoff that was at least temporarily resolved in late December.  On the island's western half, consisting of two Indonesian provinces, what started out as a strike over wages at the Grasberg mine spiraled into four months of protests which fueled a revival of the Papuan independence movement. While relative peace had been restored on both sides of the island by year's end, lasting stability will depend on a number of mutable factors in the year ahead.  The key figure in the PNG political crisis - and also the key figure in the country since its independence - is Sir Michael Somare. Somare headed the first "indigenous" government from 1972-1975 before PNG acquired official independence from Australia in 1975....