“Since the spirit of this ministry is protection, we emphasize protection,” Minister for the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers Abdul Kadir Karding said after a meeting with representatives of the Qatari Ministry of Labour at his ministry’s office here on Thursday.
He noted that Qatar is the only country in the Middle East that has ratified the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, under which a series of agreements related to global labor standards have been established.
Qatar also has a good track record of treating migrant workers from around the world well. “So, they’re very good, and the benefit is that we’re also working on data integration,” Karding informed.
Data integration is expected to ensure the data on all Indonesian migrant workers in Qatar gets registered, he said.
“This data integration means that people who were previously unregistered in Qatar will be automatically registered. This means they are automatically protected,” he expounded.
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“This means that their ecosystem for Indonesian migrant workers is, in my opinion, very good,” the minister added.
With the guarantee of protection, Karding is increasingly confident of exploring cooperation in the placement of migrant workers in Qatar, both through government-to-government (G-to-G) and government-to-private (G-to-P) schemes.
“So, we don’t want to cooperate with any country that doesn’t guarantee protection, which could put our migrant workers at risk,” he said.
“So, we will ensure this is strictly adhered to, because the law (Law on the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers) focuses on protection, its name (includes) protection, and indeed the spirit of establishing this ministry (is to provide) protection,” he added.
Meanwhile, the priority sectors for this collaboration are the placement of migrant workers in the health sector such as nursing, hospitality, as well as technology and information.
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Reporter: Katriana
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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