About 250,000 migrant workers to return due to crisis

INDONESIA: About 250,000 Indonesian migrant workers will have to return home after losing their overseas jobs due to the impact of the global economic crisis, Manpower and Transmigration Minister Erman Suparno said.

The migrant workers had to return home since the industries in which they had been working were closing down because of the crisis, the minister said here yesterday.

Apart from migrant workers who had to repatriate, at least 27,000 others had been laid off and 14,000 recommended for dismissal by their employers as a consequence of the crisis.

The layoffs were the impact of the global economic crisis which had caused a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent in export earnings.

He said the government was making some efforts to deal with the crisis, namely providing stimuli to labor-intensive industries, fiscal incentives especially for workers to encourage industrial sector growth through a small holder's business credit facility (KUR).

"The fiscal incentives for workers come in the form of tax dispensation for workers who receive minimum wages of 1.5 million rupiah per month.they account for 87 per cent of the total number of workers up to now," he said.

He admitted the migrant workers who had returned to Indonesia would increase the number of unemployed people in the country.