Indonesia Sends Team to Handle Overstayers in Saudi Arabia

TEMPO.CO, Riyadh - Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi has sent a team to help Indonesians with overstaying visas in Saudi Arabia to apply for a Saudi amnesty. The team consists of government officials from the Foreign Ministry, the Immigration Office and the Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI).

In addition to expediting services for overstaying Indonesians, the team will meet and approach a number of Saudi officials to tackle a number of obstacles.

“The Foreign Minister wants to avoid the same mistake back in 2013. Therefore, we need to address a number of bottlenecks that occurred in Indonesian side and in the Saudi Immigration,” Muhammad Lalu Iqbal, director of protections for Indonesian citizens at the Foreign Ministry, said in a press release received by Tempo on Wednesday, April 26, 2017.

It was predicted that there are at least 23,000 Indonesians with overstaying visas across Saudi Arabia who will participate in the amnesty program. In order to apply for the amnesty, the Indonesian citizens are required to obtain travel documents in lieu of passports (SPLP) from the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh or the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah.

By April 24, the number of Indonesians registered to participate in the amnesty program had reached 4,785. The number is expected to rise 30 days before the program ends.

Earlier, the Saudi Arabia government has rolled out an amnesty policy for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrant workers starting from March 29, 2017. The program will last for 90 days since the said date.

For those who participate in the amnesty program, the Saudi Arabia will exempt them from fines, detentions, and inclusions into a blacklist. For those who fail to get out of the country by June 30, 2017, the Saudi government will impose a fine of up to 100,000 riyal (US$26,000) and a ban from entering Saudi Arabia.

The amnesty program is a part of the strategy initiated by King Salman’s administration to make Saudi Arabia as a country free of illegal immigrants. The last amnesty program was rolled out back in 2013 during King Abdullah’s terms of office. In 2013, more than 105,000 Indonesians with overstaying visas participated in the amnesty program that was deemed unsuccessful. In addition to resulting in a riot, the 2013 amnesty program left hundreds of thousands of migrant workers still living in Saudi Arabia to this date.

SITA PLANASARI AQUADINI