Minister Of Manpower Ida Fauziyah Wants To Send 250,000 Special Skills Workers To Japan

Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah during the Indonesja-Japan Human Resources Forum 2024, Tokyo, Thursday (5/9). (ANTARA/Juwita Trisna Rahayu)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah plans to send as many as 250,000 workers with special skills (specified-skilled workers/SSW) in the next five years. "“ We did discuss how to increase the target not only for 100,000 for five years, but we want around 50,000 per year. So, for five years the estimated 250,000 workers, ” Ida told ANTARA on the sidelines of the Indonesia-Japan Human Resources Forum 2024 event, Tokyo, Thursday, September 5. The Japanese government has opened quotas for a number of countries to send as many as 820,000 workers over five years, including Indonesia, which has the opportunity to send 100,000 to 2029. “Indonesia has actually exceeded that target. To this day, 34,000 workers,” said Ida. The worker transfer agreement is the result of a Memorandum of Cooperation campused-skilled workers (MoC SSW) between the Ministry of Manpower and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in November 2023. In January 2024, JICA said the number of Indonesian workers in Japan was 121,507, which shot up compared to 77,889 workers last year. This number also increases when compared to other Asian countries in the context of SSW workers. However, due to the disruption of the election in February which caused administrative services to be disrupted and changes to the system in the Japanese government, harder efforts were needed to achieve this target. Salah satu perubahan skema dalam ketenagakerjaan di Jepang adalah perubahan dari Technical Internal Training Program (TITP) atau pergangan menjadi Ikusei Shurou Seido. In the TITP program, participants are not required to have a Japanese language certificate (JLPT), while the new program requires them to have the certificate as low as the N5 level. “Indonesia certainly adjusts the existing rules in Japan, now the apprenticeship process is opened to SSW, we already have resources, if we count 100.000, it means that the capital to fill the SSW opportunity is not small, they have become entrepreneurs now. Now there are 7.000 capital workers filling the SSW opportunity,” said Ida. A number of sectors needed include manufacturing, nursing (caregiver), food processing, agriculture and tourism.

"We are identifying its needs, what its preparation is like, we discuss including how to accelerate the achievement of such needs," added Ida.