Minister V Sivakumar said several meetings had been held between representatives of the two countries, including during the Malaysia-Indonesia Joint Working Group discussions, to resolve this issue.
He added that Indonesia’s manpower minister was scheduled to visit the country in the middle of this month and a meeting would be held to review this issue.
“It is the government’s intention to reduce the cost of hiring domestic workers from Indonesia.
“I am confident that a decision will be reached at the end of March regarding this issue.
“The same issue was also discussed during the recent visit to Indonesia by the prime minister and the home affairs ministry,” Bernama reported him as saying after attending the ministry’s “Meet the Clients” Day in Penang today.
Sivakumar said currently the cost of hiring Indonesian domestic workers is around RM15,000 and this stems from the cost borne in the source country itself.
“The country has ‘multilevel recruitment’ where, for example, the domestic workers are brought from one rural area and may go through several agencies before arriving in our country. So the cost becomes high,” he said.
Recently, there had been reports that some employers had paid more than RM20,000 to get their Indonesian domestic helpers.
However, Indonesian ambassador to Malaysia, Hermono said the embassy had not received any complaints although he had read reports about such claims.
“I have said this before and I am saying it again, lodge an official complaint with us if any agency in Malaysia or Indonesia charges more than RM15,000. We know what to do,” he told FMT recently.
“It is impossible to do away with agencies to recruit foreign workers in Indonesia.
“It is a huge country with people from many remote areas wanting to go abroad. It’s impossible for the government departments or agencies in Jakarta to handle such a huge movement.”
As of Jan 22, there are 399,827 Indonesians working in Malaysia in the manufacturing, construction, plantation, services, agriculture, domestic workers, mining and quarrying sectors.
Of that number, 63,323 work as foreign domestic workers. Indonesians represent the largest number in the domestic workers sector in Malaysia.