JAKARTA - Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (KP) Sakti Wahyu Trenggono together with Minister of Protection for Indonesian Migrant Workers (P2MI) Abdul Kadir Karding collaborated to prepare an extra protection scheme for Indonesian crew members (ABK) working on overseas fishing vessels.

The scheme starts from improving ABK expertise through training centers of the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (KKP), mapping ABK distribution countries, to synchronizing crew data in two ministries.

"I think this is something extraordinary, we are ready to accept the candidates for crew members who will work abroad professionally, we will study through the training centers we have," Trenggono said quoting Antara.

The KKP, he said, would maximize the training centers spread across Medan, Ambon, Tegal, Bitung, and Sukamandi as training places for prospective crew members who were registered to work abroad. In addition to competence in the marine and fisheries sector, prospective crew members will be equipped with training in foreign languages according to the country that is the destination.

Trenggono believes that with his expertise, Indonesian crew members have high competitiveness in the world of work, and can avoid violent and fraudulent practices that have still hit Indonesian crew members abroad.

"With synergy, we can improve the ability of crew members and the problem of violence and so on, we can avoid it," he said.

Synergy with the P2MI Agency also opens opportunities for graduates of advocacy education units under the KKP to have a career abroad. Every year, KKP graduates of thousands of cadets and cadets with various abilities, such as mastery of fishing technology, fishery machinery, fishery products processing technology, fishery cultivation, to water resource management.

Meanwhile, the Minister for the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (P2MI) Abdul Kadir Karding is ready to support efforts to protect migrant workers, especially crew members.

In addition to training for prospective crew members, his party together with the KKP will form a task force, synchronize crew data, and map countries that have the potential to receive the distribution of crew members professionally such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Synergy with the KKP is also to suppress the practice of illegally sending crew members abroad. Unprocedural ones are vulnerable, many reports are thrown into the sea because of quarrels, and so on. Now this is what we want to clean up, so that everything is recorded. For that we will form a task force, map out destination countries, and of course integrate data," said Karding as well.