Fighting Alone in One’s Own Land

Emanuel Edi Saputra

· 5 minutes read

Having struggled and undergone hardship in Malaysia, former migrant workers in West Kalimantan are refusing to repeat their experiences. Now, they struggle to achieve independence by opening their own businesses and creating jobs for others.

The women busily worked in the kitchen of a home in Rasau Jaya 3 village, Rasau Jaya district, Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan, on Tuesday afternoon, Jan 22. Some stirred the dodol jagung (taffy-like sweets made from corn) batter while others fried banana crackers.

The food products are sold in office buildings and by the village gardens. Some are sold at souvenir shops for Rp 7,000 (US 49.5 cents) per ounce.

“We began this processed corn snack business in 2018. We sell dodol jagung and corn brownies. We sell them door-to-door and through social media. We get between Rp 5 million and Rp 9 million a month in net income. With special orders, such as ahead of religious holidays, we can make up to Rp 20 million in profit,” said 41-year-old Sri Rahayu of the Sumber Rezeki Former Indonesian Migrant Workers Group.

The group obtains the corn from local farms. Each month, they need five 50-kilogram sacks of corn, amounting to 1,000 cobs of corn. Each day, they process between five kg and 10 kg of corn into dodol and brownies.

The group has seven members, all of whom were housewives who had worked in Malaysia and returned home. Sri Rahayu, for instance, worked in a wood processing factory in Malaysia from 2001 to 2003.

“At the time, I left my two-year-old baby and my mother to work in Malaysia. I had not been able to find a steady income as cake seller at the time, so I went to Malaysia to find better income,” Sri explained.

At the time, she left for Malaysia with 23 other people on a bus, with the help of a workers’ placement agency. Upon arrival in Malaysia, she worked at a wood processing factory with a monthly salary of 400 Malaysian ringgits or around Rp 1 million. Three years later, the company went bankrupt and Sri’s salary was unpaid.

Sri and the other Indonesian migrant workers were sent home with a severance pay of only 200 ringgits or around Rp 600,000. She had not been able to save money while she was in Malaysia. Consequently, she returned to working odd jobs with uncertain income when she got back to Indonesia.

Missing her family

Another member of the group, 43-year-old Ngatmiyati, worked in a wood processing factory from 2007 to 2017. She received a monthly salary of 1,800 ringgits or around Rp 6 million.

She had to say goodbye to her parents and three children for the sake of a better livelihood. Her uncertain income as a farm worker made it difficult for her to fund her children’s education. However, she returned to her hometown in 2017 as she missed her children.

When people like Ngatmiyati and Sri returned home, they had to continue struggling to get their lives back in order. To avoid going back to Malaysia for work, they strived to develop themselves by participating in entrepreneurship trainings held by the Pontianak Migrant Workers’ Recruitment and Protection Agency (BP3TKI).

They participated in a culinary entrepreneurship training program in 2018, where they were given the tools, raw ingredients and knowledge to create sellable products to jumpstart their business.

Now, the Sumber Rezeki group’s corn snack business makes dozens of millions of rupiah in profit each month. More than that, the group is now able to create jobs. It has hired three locals as corn snack sellers.

Partnership

The entrepreneurship training was key to the group members’ success in setting up businesses back home. Pontianak BP3TKI empowerment and protection section head Andi Kusuma Irfandi said that the knowledge learned in the training was applicable through partnerships with local businesses. Participants are facilitated to obtain raw ingredients and tools in line with their interests, such as in culinary, tourism, services and food security.

Former migrant workers also learned marketing techniques using the latest technology, such as social media. Local industry partners help promote their products. Of equal importance is the banking credit facilitation for funding.

Currently, there are 22 business groups driven by former migrant workers who participated in trainings between 2015 and 2018.

Of the 22 groups, eight, including Sumber Rezeki, now enjoy steady revenue. In Mekar Sari village, also in Kubu Raya, a chicken farm managed by former migrant workers enjoys a monthly revenue of between Rp 23 million and Rp 25 million. The group sells farmed chickens to local agents.

There are former migrant workers still under training and struggling to jumpstart their businesses. Kubu Raya resident Azizah, 41, who worked in Malaysia for dozens of years, now strives to achieve independence through her catfish and hydroponic vegetable farms.

Despite the small profit of only Rp 2 million a month, Azizah said that she was determined to not return to Malaysia for work. She said that she used a bank loan to develop her business.

Entrepreneurship trainings serve as alternative solutions to create jobs back home as the government ramps up its sending of migrant workers to Malaysia. A total of 2,478 migrant workers transited through West Kalimantan in 2018, an increase from 1,207 the previous year. In 2018, 1,496 West Kalimantan locals left for Malaysia for work, an increase from 1,003 in 2017.

This is only the official figure. There are 52 illegal border-crossing routes connected to 32 Malaysian villages. Records show that 2,000 illegal Indonesian migrant workers are deported each year.

Editor:

MIGRANT WORKERS former migrant workers