(News Today) - Malaysia’s leader said Tuesday he expects Indonesia to soon end a nearly yearlong freeze on sending housemaids to Malaysia as both sides seek to wrap up talks on setting a minimum wage.
Indonesia stopped supplying new domestic workers to neighboring Malaysia last June after several high-profile cases of alleged assault drew attention to risks faced by some 230,000 Indonesian maids who work in Malaysia.
Prime Minister Najib Razak signed an agreement Tuesday with Indonesia’s visiting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to improve working conditions for Indonesian maids, including a guaranteed day off each week. Najib said the issue of minimum wage required further discussions, but that he was optimistic it would be resolved.
“I assume (the freeze) would be lifted soon ... if all the issues have been settled,” Najib told a news conference after meeting Yudhoyono in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya. Yudhoyono did not speak to reporters.
Mistreatment of maids has occasionally strained ties between Indonesia and its more prosperous neighbor over the past decade. Hundreds of maids complain to the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur every year of unpaid salaries, overwork and sometimes physical abuse.
Several Malaysians have been arrested in the past year for allegedly assaulting their maids. A few are on trial for murder after their maids were found dead because of severe injuries.
The freeze bars Indonesian companies that recruit and train domestic workers from sending anyone to Malaysia, but it has reportedly led to freelance agents on both sides illegally bringing in maids to work without approval in Malaysia.
Source : kompas.com
Friday, May 21, 2010
Malaysia Expects Indonesia to End Freeze on Maids
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