SURABAYA: Indonesia will make efforts to compete for formal workforce markets abroad, head of the National Agency for Workers' Placement and Protection (BNP2TKI), Jumhur Hidayat, said.
"We must not fall behind the Philippines and Vietnam," he said at a Muslim fast breaking gathering with dozens of formal workers who were leaving for Malaysia.
Jumhur was quoted by the Indonesian news agency, Antara, as saying that the government would continue to seek efforts to get a share in the world's formal manpower markets to catch up with other countries.
"The government has for the past decades no vision of placing its migrant workers in the formal sectors," he said.
Jumhur admitted the government had been trapped into only sending workers for the informal sector or housemaids while only eight countries had been willing to accept workers in the sector.
"Finally, the formal sector market was taken by workers from neighbouring countries like the Philippines," he said.
He said he had recently visited Darwin to extend the country's workforce market in the Australian state.
"Sixty-percent meat exports from Darwin go to Indonesia but only 500 Indonesian workers work in that state while there are around 8,000 Philippines working there," he said.
Jumhur said that various Middle Eastern countries had opened an opportunity for tens of thousands of Indonesian nurses to work in various hospitals in those countries.
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