INDONESIA is looking at imposing a moratorium on sending its maids to Malaysia following the death of Adelina Lisio in Penang last week after being allegedly abused by her employer.

The Jakarta Post reports that Indonesian ambassador to Malaysia Rusdi Kirana as saying he had proposed halting the sending of domestic workers to Malaysia and a restructuring of the employment administration process.

“A moratorium is important so we can restructure our TKI (migrant workers) employment system to prevent cases such as Adelina’s from happening again,” Rusdi told the Jakarta Post.

He was quoted as saying that violations against Indonesian domestic helpers had caused tension between the two countries.

“In order to promote cooperation, what happened to Adelina should not happen again,” the envoy was quoted as saying in the report.

The paper also reported Rusdi as saying President Joko Widodo is on board with the idea of halting the recruitment of Indonesian domestic workers to Malaysia, having raised the issue during an annual consultation meeting hosted by Prime Minister Najib Razak in Kuching last year.

Malaysian police are currently completing the investigation into Adelina’s death, who is believed to have died from suspected abuse by her employer at Taman Kota Permai 2 in Bukit Mertajam last week.

Penang police chief A. Thaiveegan said police believe the case could be resolved soon following the arrest of three members of a family aged 36, 39 and 60 in connection with the case.

Adelina, 28, died at 4.45pm last Sunday while receiving treatment at Bukit Mertajam Hospital and the body was sent to Seberang Jaya Hospital for a post-mortem.

The woman was found about 8pm on Saturday after the police received a report on the alleged abuse from a man, who is also an assistant to Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Lim.

She had allegedly been forced to sleep outside the house with her employer’s dog for a month. She died with severe injuries to the head and face, and had wounds on the hands and legs.
This is not the first time that Indonesia has proposed a moratorium on its domestic workers working in Malaysia.

In 2011, Indonesia lifted a two-year moratorium when a memorandum of understanding between both countries was signed.

The MoU expired in 2016 and has not been renewed.

However, last year, when tabling Budget 2018, Finance Minister Najib said the government was giving employers a choice to recruit foreign maids directly from nine source countries without going through agents and Indonesia was one of the countries.

Director-general of Immigration Mustafar Ali said the process of hiring foreign maids will only take eight days via the new online maid system (SMO) which came into effect on January 1. – February 17, 2018.