PETALING JAYA: The case of a maid who ran off with her employer’s jewellery highlighted the need to recruit domestic workers through the proper channels or agencies, according to the Indonesian Embassy.

“Employers who want to hire domestic workers should do so through the official system, which is the OCS (One Channel System) that was agreed upon in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Indonesia and Malaysia.

“If the employer hires someone through OCS, we can easily track the background of the person,” said the Indonesian ambassador to Malaysia Hermono.

“And we can ask the parties responsible, which are the Indonesian and Malaysian agencies or agents, because they are accountable (for the employees),” he said when contacted.

Hermono was commenting on a case in Butterworth, Penang where a 27-year-old Indonesian helper fled from the house of her employer after allegedly taking gold jewellery worth RM69,000.

The woman had apparently just started work in June.

“We have tracked how she entered for employment here in Malaysia and in our recruitment platform, we could not find her name on the database,” Hermono said.

“However, she has a work permit here in Malaysia.

“She entered Malaysia on a boat to Johor on May 20 from Batam, Indonesia,” he added.

Hermono said the woman had most likely entered Malaysia with a tourist visa, but the identity of her agent in Indonesia and Malaysia remained unknown.

He said agents who arranged for the employment of Indonesian maids in Malaysia through the Sistem Maid Online (SMO) would be reprimanded.

According to him, the Butterworth employer of the maid might have converted her tourist visa to a work permit via the SMO, since her name was not in the Indonesian database.

“This is the problem of employers hiring domestic workers through channels that we cannot control, such as the SMO,” he said.

(The SMO allows nationals from several countries to arrive in Malaysia on tourist visas and have them converted into work permits. But under the MOU between Indonesia and Malaysia, the republic made it clear that only OCS should be used.)

Hermono said the theft case should be taken as a lesson for employers to only hire domestic workers through the proper channels.

“This is also a deterrent for other Indonesian workers not to do things that are against Malaysian law,” he said.

He said Indonesia was willing to cooperate with Malaysian authorities if they could identify the Indonesian agent because according to Indonesian law, individuals are not allowed to send domestic workers to Malaysia.

Meanwhile, National Human Resources Association Malaysia president Zarina Ismail said investigations should be done to find the agents as they were the ones responsible for their workers.

She said they would have the worker’s background informationto assist in the investigation.

“For now, I hope the employers are willing to share the details of her employment so we can find her agent.

“If this is not taken seriously and the worker is not reprimanded, she may steal again from other employers. Or worse, other workers may think that it is okay to steal because no action can be taken,” she said.

She added that this should be a lesson to employers to only hire domestic workers through agencies.

In June, The Star reported that freelance recruitment agents are advertising Indonesian domestic workers and continuing to publicise the SMO.

Some Malaysian households, desperate for domestic helpers, had apparently resorted to hiring such workers via social media and freelance agents due to a delay in the arrival of Indonesian maids.

The first batch only arrived in August, four months after the MOU was signed.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2022/09/16/use-right-channel-for-maids