[Kabar-indonesia] Employers upset over expat employment permit

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post 
Monday, July 3, 2006

Employers upset over expat employment permit

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Although two months have passed since the government put into effect the new 
2006 Ministerial Regulation on the simplification of the proceedures involved 
in obtaining an expatriate employment permit (IMTA), employers are still 
finding weaknesses in the implementation of the regulation.

"With the new regulation, we are supposed to get the permit within four days, 
but, in reality, our company had to wait for seven days to the permit for our 
foreign consultants," Tuti a Newmont mining company spokesperson said during 
a meeting of the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) on Friday.

Article 23.2 of the regulation, issued by the Manpower and Transmigration 
Ministry on March 29, states that the ministry will issue an IMTA within four 
days, at the latest, of a company completing all the requirements, including 
providing a copy of a working contract, a bank receipt of compensation payment and 
four 4x6-sized color photographs of the foreign worker.

According to Apindo chairman Sofyan Wanandi, difficulties often lie with 
government officials in the field.

"Basically, the new regulations are fine. The problem is that when it comes 
to practice, the manpower ministry is no longer in charge of their officials at 
manpower offices in regions, making it difficult for them to inform people 
about the regulations directly," he said.

Under regional autonomy law, he added, the governors have the authority to 
command and control manpower officials in their regions. Usually, the officials 
would not implement any new regulations before their governors told them to do 
so. Thus, the manpower minister needed to tell the governors to give the 
command to their officials.

"To make it more efficient, I think the manpower ministry should have lines 
of command to the manpower officials in regions, so the ministry can help 
provincial administration implementing new regulation in their regions," Sofyan 
said.

The director of foreign workers employment at the Manpower and Transmigration 
Ministry, Kunjung Masehat, said there was a problem regarding the authority, 
due to the uneven implementation of regional autonomy.

Despite all the minuses, he said, the new regulation, aimed to complement a 
2004 ministerial decree, could be bring benefits to employers.

"Employers can obtain expatriate employment permits in four days, while 
before they had to wait for seven days. They can also get the IMTA even before the 
foreign worker has arrived here, and the can obtain the expatriate employment 
plan in 3 days, one day less than before," said Kunjung.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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