Right violations of Indonesian migrant workers on foreign fishing vessels are still occuring. Worker recruitment companies seem to be competing to reduce the cost of competition (race to the bottom) at the expense of quality standards, the safety of fishery workers, and reducing the cost of labor itself. The lack of transparency and cooperation at the regional level gives manning agencies open wide opportunities to make profits taken from vulnerable groups.
This was conveyed by the Indonesian Advocate of the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), Haikal Peeters, at the Fishing Vessel Crew (FVC) Protection Conference organized by Narasi at Usmar Ismail Hall, Jakarta, Thursday (12/10/2023). This conference also attended by the Director of Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BP2MI) of the Ministry of Manpower, Rendra Setiawan, Director of Protection of Indonesian Citizens of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Judha Nugraha, and Managing Partner of DNT Lawyers, Pahrur Roji Dalimunthe in a forum to exchange ideas and opinions from various perspectives on the issue of human rights violations experienced by Indonesian migrant fishing vessel crew.
EJF as a non-governmental organization with a mission to combat illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing (IUUF) sees IUUF and human rights violations in the fisheries sector as interrelated issues.
Overlapping government authorities in supervising and granting permits for the recruitment of crew members as Indonesian migrant workers (IMW) causes bureaucratic hurdles so that the recruitment stage becomes layered. Companies or manning agencies exploit this situation to exploit crew members. Even so, initiatives from migrant worker destination countries must also support to combat this undignified act.
In his speech, Haikal said that EJF had conducted more than 190 interviews with former crew members who worked on 167 fishing vessels operating around the world in 2019-2020. In these interviews, 80% of the crew members admitted to experiencing treatments that indicated forced labor and even 35% reported experiences that indicated human trafficking starting at the recruitment process by manning agencies in Indonesia.
EJF highlighted six human rights violations experienced by migrant fishing vessel crew members: 1) charging high placement and recruitment fees to crew members; 2) non-refund of security deposits even after the contract has been completed; 3) pressuring crew members to sign contracts in a foreign language; 4) withholding crew members’ personal documents; 5) threatening and intimidating crew members verbally and physically; 6) crew members being placed on different vessels from those agreed in the contract.
Responding to the situation of the inappropriate placement of migrant crew members to fishing grounds, Rendra explained that the problem occurred because there was no clear information for the Indonesian Representative to conduct verification and surveys. Therefore, Rendra hopes that the derivative rules of Government Regulation (PP) No. 22/2022 can be finalized soon so that there are clear rules related to the placement stages of the crew so that it can run like the rules for land-based worker placing. “Hopefully with the derivative regulation of PP 22 we can convey that,” he said.
“The problem in Indonesia is mostly single-task (are handled by) multi-agency,” said Pahru Roji, referring to the overlapping tasks of monitoring the work of crew members on migrant fishing vessels. However, when human rights violations occur, all parties point fingers at each other. According to the applicable law, he said, there are at least four government agencies in charge of supervising the Ministry of Transportation and Ministry of Manpower under the central government, as well as provincial and district/city governments. In line with Rendra, he also encouraged the derivative regulation of PP 22/2022 to regulate the supervision, placement, and post-employment process.
Judha Nugraha from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Protection of Indonesian Citizens as the party that receives the most reports of violations said to reduce sectoral egos, all supervision sectors need to focus on IMW who need to get work easily, cheaply, quickly, and safely. “I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury to wait. If we talk about handling cases, (if we) wait for the rules (to be agreed), it will not be done. The problem is in sight. Their lives are threatened. We must save them,” he said.
He also emphasized that a bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) is a more realistic rule to implement while waiting for the ratification of ILO international rule C188. The memorandum of understanding contains workers’ rights, minimum salaries, and working conditions that must be met by ship owners such as the example of Taiwanese ships required to have wifi for communication facilities. This situation can make it difficult for ship owners or captains to violate workers’ rights because it is easy for crew members to report.
Rendra also added that in the ASEAN Summit Conference all heads of state have agreed on the ASEAN Declaration on The Placement and Protection of Migrant Fishers which will be signed in Cambodia next year. The declaration will regulate supervision and law enforcement, exchange of information related to trafficking cases, establishment of decent work standards, regulation of rights for migrant crew members, reintegration of migrant crew members, and certification of competence of migrant crew members.
Responding to the Conference on the Protection of Fishing Vessel Crew, DFW Indonesia validated EJF’s findings. Based on NFC Indonesia data, 44.23% of complainants indicated experiencing forced labor, 42.30% of complainants experienced human trafficking, while 13.47% of complainants experienced other labor rights violations.
DFW Legal Officer Jeanny Sirait continued, “This is not out of the blue, technical regulations that are not optimal and still biased on land are of course an obstacle to the implementation of protection, but besides that, the practice of protection is still filled by overlapping authorities so that the issue of protecting crew members on fishing vessels is not considered a priority of state responsibility, but rather an effort to seize the ‘stage’ and authority.”
She continued, this must be taken seriously, considering that crew members on fishing vessels certainly have the same rights to be respected, protected and fulfill their rights. Not only at the level of regulation, but also at the level of the supervision system, implementation of protection, enforcement of violations to the restoration of rights.
In this event, to help policy makers reduce the risk of human rights violations in the future, EJF gives eight main recommendation steps including 1) accelerating the transition to single permit system under manpower ministry (called SIP3MI); 2) evaluating and aligning the “zero cost” mandate in accordance with Law No. 18/2017; 3) implement a mechanism for transparency of manning agents who obey and violate the regulations and provide access the information to crew members; 4) prohibit recruitment agencies that violate and do not meet requirements from operating; 5) strengthen immigration checkpoints; 6) introduce a risk-based approach; 7) prohibit the practice of retaining crew members’ personal documents; and lastly, 8) establish a task force under the president or presidential regulation with members from relevant ministries and/or agencies.
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