Indonesia’s Maid-Based Economy

To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping: It doesn’t matter whether a fat president or slim president, as long as he brings prosperity. If the president does care about his personal performance, he should also be bothered by the maid- sending policy which utterly denting his country’s image.

Instead of “knowledge-based economy” as much developed in Singapore and now Malaysia, in contrast, Indonesia – after 66 years of independence and 103 years of national awakening – is still grappling with “maid-based economy”.

Recent news suggests that this month Indonesia will resume sending maids to Malaysia, after two-year moratorium. This shameful policy should be taken, because the government – despite a plethora of opportunities including spacious lands, abundant workers and natural resources – can’t still provide descent jobs to its citizens.

Why can’t Indonesia create many jobs here?

First, the existing investments cannot absorb ever-growing workers. Besides, long-standing red-tapes and deep-seated corruptions hamper more investments, the recent news of increasing foreign-ownership – outcome of excessive liberalization – also pose a new threat of national economic development, particularly investment. Those profit-oriented banks by all means prefer serving consumer credits over financing riskier national manufactures. This trend compounds domestic job creations.

Second, the government still goes on with self-inflicted industrial strategy. The recent Merpati’s China-made airplane crash raised much concerns, not only for the victims, but on domestic products preference policy as well. Why must Indonesia’s State Owned Enterprise buy Chinese products, of which can be locally made? Since 1995, PTDI’s N250 – on par with crashed Chinese MA60 – had accomplished its maiden flight and with a few more steps poised for mass production.

Owing to these frivolous policies, national industries – as the main source of job absorptions – undergo perfect storm covering finance, investment administration and demand strategy and now free trade agreement. As a result, Indonesia sees deindustrialization in recent years amid vibrant regional economy. Indonesia’s unskilled workers scramble to find any jobs including being maids in Malaysia.

Sending maids to neighboring countries is merely not trivial matters. It does hurt our national pride. And without any significant progress of leaving ignominious ‘maid-based economy”, maybe, they keep calling us Indon whom actually deserve making planes rather than cleaning Malaysians’ houses.

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Reference:

1. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/04/26/indonesia-resume-sending-maids-malaysia-next-month.html