Menaker Ida Fauziyah Calls Indonesian ABK A Slave On A Foreign-Flagged Ship

Illustration. (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Minister of Manpower (Menaker) Ida Fauziyah acknowledged that indonesian crew members, especially the crew of foreign-flagged fishing boats, were trapped in the situation of modern slavery at sea.

"From time to time, Indonesian crew members, especially fishing boat crews, often experience various problems. They are trapped in the situation of modern slavery at sea," he said in the webinar "Questioning the Multi-Party Commitment in Protecting Indonesian ABK on Foreign Fishing Vessels", in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Wednesday, April 14.

Ida reveals the problems that are often faced by abks dominated by fraud, salary detention, over-the-clock work, to physical and sexual violence.

He acknowledged that due to the number of cases that have befallen Indonesian crew members on foreign-flagged fishing vessels, there needs to be improved governance of crew placement.

Efforts to improve, continued Ida, continued to be carried out by the government, including through the completion of derivative rules of Law No. 18 of 2017 on the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (PPMI) in the form of government regulations for the placement and protection of commercial and fishery crews working on foreign-flagged vessels.

"The process we are waiting for, (currently RPP crew protection) is still proposed in Setneg (Secretariat of State)," he said.

Ida said a number of cases of human rights violations against Indonesian crew members occurred due to the process or early stages in the country in the whole series of abk placement process.

"Some of the points that cause problems are in the process of granting permission for companies that will place crews, then the recruitment process, data collection, training and certification processes and subsequent surveillance processes," he said.

According to Ida, evaluation and improvement are absolutely done at these stages so that the impact of problems caused when ABK work on the ship can be significantly suppressed.

"This improvement needs synergy of ministries / institutions in order to realize the governance of the placement and protection of our migrant crew better," concluded Ida.