After the lifting of the moratorium on the sending of Indonesian migrant workers to Malaysia last  December 1, 2011, eventually about 50 thousand Indonesian migrant workers will be flown back to Malaysia during 2012. It took two years for Indonesia and  Malaysia to find a solution to the problem  in handling of workers. The new agreement  and  the imposition of a new law  will ensure more protection to the workers to be sent  to Malaysia next March 1. This is important   after many cases of  violence against Indonesian  migrant workers abroad, including in Malaysia. The workers who work in any sector will now have the same security  and standards in the qualification of formal workers. The renewal of MoU with Malaysia in the placement of workers consists , among others, agreements  on workers' basic rights and  clear status, working hours, salary, holiday rights with formal employment standards.
Interestingly, this time the government in cooperation with some national banks, are to provide financial services  for the workers  that can be used in payment of salaries. The workers are invited to take advantage of banking services to better ensure their welfare rather than if they receive their  salary in cash. They can easily lost the money that way and  there is possibility that  the employers may  claim to have paid the  salary though in fact they have not. Since usually there is no receipt , it  is difficult to prove otherwise. By using transfer between accounts, payment of workers salaries can be easily traced.
However, the MoU means the government must  tighten the conditions  of prospective workers  and reject the shipment of those considered as  not to have the necessary skills.
It is expected that  the MoU with Malaysia, is an example to deal with the placement of migrant workers in  other countries, which recognize and treat informal workers like house maids for instance,  as formal workers with normative rights. However, hopefully in  the future Indonesia will  no longer send workers abroad as housemaids  and will only send formal sector workers. If there is still recruitment agency that insists on sending of the housemaid  abroad then the government must take decisive actions, ranging from reprimand to revocation. From now on, the government must begin to reduce shipments of informal workers such as housemaids. Not only  to avoid  a repeat of violence that often affects informal workers like housemaids  but   also for the sake of the nation's  prestige. But most importantly at this time is how the regulation of shipping workers in this country to be addressed. Hopefully  the new MoU with Malaysia will really  give  the
necessary  protection to the heroes of Foreign Exchange.