TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has pressed for conducting reform of the migrant worker dispatch ecosystem to offer optimal protection and fulfillment of migrant workers' rights.

In a statement here on Saturday, Jokowi highlighted the importance of ensuring that the welfare of migrant workers and their families improve.

"Ministries, agencies, and private companies, including Apjati (Association of Labor Service Companies), must be part of the big changes we are making," the president stated.

The skills, professionalism, and excellence of migrant workers must be honed since an early stage, so that the competitiveness of migrant workers would be superior and simultaneously they can become national envoys overseas, he remarked.

President Jokowi officially opened the National Congress of (Munas) of Apjati that was held virtually at the Grand Mercure Hotel, Bandung, West Java, on Friday (Nov 27).

In his remarks, Jokowi stated that job creation should be prioritized at a time when 2.9 million new from the working age population enter the labor market annually.

The head of state emphasized that every party was tasked with opening new job opportunities as widely as possible.

To this end, cooperation and synergy are deemed necessary, including to create a quality work space that protects the rights of migrant workers abroad and improves the quality and potential of Indonesian migrant workers optimally.

"There are still migrant workers, who do not receive adequate protection, especially those who do not go through the non-worker route. What is clear is that the migrant workers are not protected," he added.

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