"We have planned to stop sending domestic helpers in 2017 and the plan has been contained in our domestic worker roadmap," the minister said here on Sunday.
He said that by that year the sending of house maids was expected to reach the zero point, or no dispatches at all.
The minister said that the country could not all of a sudden stop sending house maids because employment fields at home for them were not yet enough.
"Indonesia could not ban Indonesian workers from working abroad because doing such a thing would violate human rights principle," the minister said. After all, the right to employment was protected by the 1945 Constitutions," he said.
Muhaimin said that the government basically intended to stop the sending of domestic workers abroad but it could not do it all of a sudden and it should do it in stages with enough preparations.
"As a solution, we have to provide more job opportunities at home so that famale workers who work in foreign countries could change their profession for working at home," he said. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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