Indonesia hopes to work with Singapore to improve the skills of Indonesians who take jobs abroad, Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri said.
This might involve an exchange of instructors to ensure the workers are better trained in tasks like babysitting or caring for the elderly, he said after meeting his visiting counterpart from Singapore, Mr Tan Chuan-Jin, here yesterday.
"The protection of foreign workers in Singapore has been good, and we are thankful to Singapore for that," Mr Hanif told reporters.
"Going forward, we hope to expand cooperation to improve the competencies of our workers, and on issues like certification."
According to Indonesia's manpower ministry, there are 23,437 Indonesians working in Singapore - 19,442 in the informal sector.
Mr Tan said: "We do share a lot of common perspectives about how to develop our workforce, how to look after our people better, both within our countries and those of our workers who work abroad... There are different areas of cooperation and collaboration that we look forward to exploring."
Mr Hanif's comments come as Indonesia aims to reduce the number of unskilled workers going abroad as maids, and clamps down on illegal practices and rogue recruitment agencies.
Yesterday, he pointed out that Indonesia has only seven skill certification agencies handling 300,000 workers heading overseas for informal jobs a year, which is inadequate.
These agencies disqualify workers who are passed by rogue recruitment agencies.
"We have had cases where workers were considered trained but had to go back home because they could not perform the work abroad," Mr Hanif said.
"This is why we want to beef up our certification process."
This article was first published on Nov 28, 2014.
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