The number of women leaving the archipelago, legally or illegally, has been steadily climbing over the past decade, according to the National Authority for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers.

An estimated six million Indonesian woman – some 90 percent of all Indonesian migrant labourers – are now working overseas, according to the authority.

Most go to the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Jordon and Qatar, with the rest are in Asia Pacific, including Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.

Many Indonesian villages are left with a shortage of women. Men, such as Edin in Cimanggu village, in a rural farming community on Java Island, sometimes assume the role of a single parent for years at a time.

“It’s very difficult. I have to be very patient to raise them. The grandparents cannot take care of them, so it’s only me,” said Edin, who has two teenagers.

His wife worked in Saudi Arabia for almost seven years, enabling the couple to pay school fees and buy a motorcycle. But they still cannot afford their own land or a house, he said.

His wife returns in six months from what he hopes will be her last trip. “It is not worth it, I don’t want her to go again,” he said.

According to the World Bank, the registered remittances Indonesian migrant workers send home account for more than US$6 billion annually, comprising the second-highest source of income after oil and gas.

Paying the price

But this contribution comes at a significant cost to women and their families.

“Most of the women are in debt because of placement fees and travel costs they have to pay the [employment] agents. It sometimes takes them the first 16 months to pay the agents back,” said Yoko Doi, a specialist in migrant labour at the World Bank in Jakarta. “They also lack financial planning.”

For many, the desperately sought-after prosperity for which they sacrificed so much remains elusive.

Nine-year-old Zikiri’s mother has been working for more than two years in Saudi Arabia and left when his sister was still a baby. She has only sent money home once.

“His father was supposed to take care of him, but he could not do it. The kids were dirty and did not get enough food, so we brought them here,” said Ai Syamsiyah, Zikiri’s aunt.

Undeterred

Some migrant workers build big houses, but cannot afford the maintenance and are forced to go back to work abroad. But most of the money is spent on daily costs for schooling, food and transportation.

Wages abroad are low and the workload sometimes involves looking after entire families alone without holidays.

Women make the most in Hong Kong, earning almost $500 per month, while in Malaysia, they make less then $150, according to Migrant Care, an Indonesian NGO.

But back home they make a fraction of that amount, and unemployment and poverty are rife.

The stories about the appalling conditions experienced by migrant workers are painful. Some women sleep in cupboards, or have no private space at all. Food is poor and insufficient. They often work extremely long hours and are the first to get up and the last to go to bed. An estimated 20 percent come back abused, raped, or without being paid, according to Migrant Care.

But for the women of Cimanggu, such horror stories do not deter women from leaving home.

“I was worried sick. If I was rich, I would not have let her go, but I could not even send her to school. She sacrificed herself for a better economic situation,” said Eneh, whose 18-year-old daughter went to Saudi Arabia. After two years of hard work there, her daughter returned with only $120.

Indonesian women look to other countries for work is a post from: Updated News

CAMP LEATHERNECK, AFGHANISTAN — U.S. Marines are mounting an intensive effort to disrupt the opium harvest in the former Taliban enclave of Marja by confiscating tools from migrant workers, compensating poppy farmers who plow under their fields and collaborating with Drug Enforcement Administration personnel to raid collection sites.

The steps amount to one of the most novel U.S. attempts to crack down on a key part of Afghanistan’s drug trade while seeking to minimize the impact on individual farmers, many of them poor sharecroppers who face economic peril if they cannot harvest or sell their crops.

Read more ….

My Comment: Growing opium is what the Afghan farmer knows best. The marines may be successful with stopping much of this year’s crop, but there is always next year, the following year, and so on. This is a stop gap measure at best …. with results that will probably only be temporary.

Trying To Stop The Afghan Drug Trade is a post from: Updated News

For a background on the rioting and the poverty that is prevalent in the country, we turn to this analysis from the BBC.

Shapina Teleushova’s voice trembles in fear as she recalls the night of the protests.

“It was quiet and then suddenly I heard a crowd yelling in the street,” the bed and breakfast hotel employee said.

“Suddenly about 200 people stormed the building, they were equipped with sticks and rocks. It was chaos.

“They destroyed everything, the doors, the windows, smashed all the TV sets and other equipment. Our guests were so scared.”

It was a night of looting and shooting in Bishkek, following the mass protests across the country on 7 April.

The next day, thousands of residents in Bishkek woke up to chaos. Smoke was still coming out of dozens of shops that were looted and set on fire.

“We had mobile phone sets worth 4m som ($90,000, £58,000); nothing is left now,” one shopkeeper at Vefa trade centre cried as she swept shattered glass and mobile phone packaging into a pile.
…

Kyrgyzstan’s uprising was a result of the worsening economic situation in a country of five million, where the majority of working-age males seek employment elsewhere.

They travel as migrant workers to Russia or Kazakhstan. But the remittances they had been sending back home dried up after the global financial meltdown.

The government’s decision to double household utility prices from January 2010 caused widespread discontent.

Small protests erupted in February and March in mountainous regions, where people were demanding price cuts. In a country where the average monthly income is $70 many simply could not afford to pay over $100 for utility bills.

“If you look at some of the root causes of what happened, it is that the population has got poorer and poorer over the last two years with price increases and the drop in remittances,” said Catherine Brown, Mercy Corps country director in Kyrgyzstan.

“Some of the destruction, the looting, happened because people saw an opportunity to get things there is no way in their life they can afford.

“The root cause of this is the poverty level of people.”

Médecins Sans Frontières is heading to Kyrgyzstan to providfe medical healing from the violence takeover and protests. From the MSF press release we learn more about their new operation.

Hundreds of wounded arrived in Bishkek hospitals following violent confrontations between armed forces and protesters in the streets of Kyrgyzstan’s capital on April 7. The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team in Kyrgyzstan immediately responded by providing the National Hospital and the main ambulance station with emergency medical supplies and drugs, including bandages and other sterile material, intravenous injection sets, antibiotics and painkillers. More material and drugs are to be donated today by MSF to three health structures in the capital city.

In coordination with ICRC, MSF staff in Bishkek are visiting hospitals and meeting health authorities to further assess needs in terms of medical material and human resources. “In the National Hospital, injured people are still arriving today. We have to ensure the hundreds of victims have access to proper medical care. Most of them have been beaten or shot, and some suffered heavy traumas to their heads or chests,” said Alexandre Baillat, MSF’s Head of Mission in Kyrgyzstan.

Additional shipments of more surigcal material and special medical kits that contain enough supplies to take care of 300 wounded people, are currently being sent from MSF’s supply center in Bordeaux, France, to Kyrgyzstan.

Médecins Sans Frontières has been running a tuberculosis programme in Kyrgyzstan’s penitentiary system since 2006.

How the Kyrgyzstan story relates to poverty is a post from: Updated News

Before microcredit began, moneylenders would charge unfair interest rates to to the poor, rates so high that they were impossible to pay off. Instead, microcredit charged fairer interest rates, and also used peer groups and counselors to insure that the borrowers paid back their loans.

Instead, the moneylenders have flourished in India. Some moneylenders have even adopted the practices of micro-credit lenders, blurring the differences to the would be borrower. A few borrowers have even used the moneylenders to help pay of their microcredit loans.

From the Wall Street Journal, writer Ketaki Gpkhale gives us a couple of examples and a counter point from microcredit.

Here in Mahabubnagar, a city of migrant workers that has one of the highest concentrations of microfinance in Andhra Pradesh — and one of the highest concentrations of moneylenders — M. Murlidhar owns a traditional moneylending business. He says people are “repaying their loans faster,” and that the “overall rotation of money in society has been increased” by the advent of microfinance and government lending programs.

The city has 50 registered moneylenders, and an unknown number of unregistered lenders. On the town’s main drag stand prominent offices for virtually every kind of lender from moneylenders and microfinance companies to chit funds, a sort of savings club that auctions its funds to the highest bidder. Locals say lending is so frothy that it is possible to get day loans in the vegetable market that provide 100 rupees in the morning that have to be repaid with 10 rupees interest by dusk. More than 80% of registered moneylenders in Jadcherla, the nearby lending center for the district, launched their businesses after 2000, when the number of microfinance lenders began to skyrocket.

One lender, who wished to remain anonymous because his business is unregistered, gives borrowers short-term, collateral-free loans “as quickly as an ATM gives money,” he boasts. Interest sometimes has to be paid on a daily basis and works out to an annual rate of 48%.

The poor use his loans as a stopgap when they can’t make their weekly microfinance repayments because their income was less than expected, he says.

In Hanuman Nagar, a slum nestled under a highway, the moneylenders are virtually indistinguishable from the microlenders. They distribute knock-off versions of the microlenders’ passbooks. Some use the same weekly repayment structure and door-to-door service as the microlenders do.

The difference, however, is that the moneylenders give loans faster, without asking the women to form groups and serve as each other’s guarantors, as microfinance lenders do in order to ensure a higher repayment rate. They also charge significantly more than the four microlenders serving the neighborhood.

Baleshwari, 23 years old, and her sister Balamani, 40, started taking microcredit two years ago when their father, the sole breadwinner, died. Between the two of them, they have taken loans from four different microlenders and owe payments totaling 4,430 rupees, about $95, each month. During the monsoons, when their combined monthly income, drawn from selling bamboo baskets and catering food, dips to about $65, they turn to the local pawn broker for short-term loans to cover their microfinance debt. The interest rates she pays to pawn brokers range from 36% to 48%, she says, and she had to put up gold jewelry as collateral. Her microfinance loans have interest rates of 18% and 24%.

“Group pressure makes us go to moneylenders” to cover their microfinance loans, says Baleshwari, who goes by only one name, as does her sister. “We get small loans for 15 days to fill the gaps when we can’t pay. If you lag behind, the rest of the group members can’t get new loans.”

This dynamic is why some analysts believe the village moneylenders are actually floating the microfinance lenders.

Microlenders disagree. They say the boom in traditional moneylending has been fueled by an increase in demand for credit, and that the share of debt owed to moneylenders is up because microfinance has yet to hit maximum penetration. Some doubt that microfinance is spurring moneylender growth. Although “microfinance institutions and moneylenders offer different products, and it would be quite possible for them to work side-by-side,” it doesn’t imply a causal relationship, says Rachel Glennerster, executive director of the Poverty Action Lab. She suggested some borrowers may not be paying one loan with another, but using additional funds to expand businesses.

Moneylenders vs microcredit is a post from: Updated News

From Global Post, commentator Thomas Mucha desctibes some of the effects that the poor are still feeling from the increasingly connected world economy.

The question now is who will suffer the most from a crisis that swept from the casino canyons of Wall Street, to the smoke-choked factories of Guangdong, to the snowy peaks of the Andes. And, more importantly, what can be done about it?

We heard one troubling hint last week from World Bank president Robert Zoellick: the poor. The World Bank predicts an additional 89 million people will be thrown into extreme poverty by the end of next year, defined as those subsisting on less than $1.25 a day. “The poor and most vulnerable are at greatest risk from economic shocks — families are pushed into poverty, health conditions deteriorate, school attendance declines and progress in other critical areas is stalled or reversed,” Zoelick said upon release of the Sept. 16 report, which focused on the world’s 43 poorest nations.

So why does this matter, you ask?

While low-income countries contribute less in terms of output than G20 nations, they play an increasingly important role in the global economy. And most have been severely damaged by the darkness of the past 12 months, as GlobalPost coverage of the meltdown has consistently shown.

For starters, a drop in global trade is very bad news for countries that supply the raw materials and relatively cheap labor that go into making stuff. The World Bank says global export demand will drop as much as 10 percent this year. That’s a staggering amount that has already triggered nightmarish consequences, from the 20 million Chinese migrant workers who lost their jobs last year, to the thousands of Mexican and Canadian auto workers laid off amid Detroit’s collapse, to the army of South African and Zambian miners thrown out of work when global demand for copper, platinum and other industrial metals dried up.

Beyond trade there’s private investment — money that goes to finance schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure projects critical to developing economies. This too, is way down amid the crisis: the World Bank estimates that net private capital flows to the world’s poorest countries will drop to $13 billion this year, or less than half the amount in 2007 as private investors keep more money in their pockets.

Comment: G-20 still in crisis mode is a post from: Updated News

Only if you can push your way into the throng of 100 or so workers on a journey home from work which makes commuting on Britain’s much-maligned transport network seem like luxury.

Shoehorned onto the back of a lorry, they are crossing the Sahara Desert in temperatures of up to 35c in the shade. The hellish trip can last two to three weeks.

This is the way an army of migrant workers from some of Africa’s poorest states get home from oil-rich Libya.

The lorries follow ancient spice caravan routes over hundreds of miles to Niger and Mali, braving dust storms and giant potholes.

The workers, who do menial jobs shunned by Libyans, have some time with their families – then their desert commute starts all over again.

Room for one more on top? How to get a seat in rush hour is a post from: Updated News

The global economic slowdown will hit the poorest nations hardest. Demand for their exports is falling. Prices of raw materials are plunging. Flows of money from migrant workers to families back home will shrink as unemployment rises elsewhere. In these circumstances it is more important than ever that rich countries deliver on aid promises. That is why the OECD has called on the world’s main donors to join an Aid Pledge to stick by their commitments.

As world leaders head to Doha for a U.N. meeting on financing for development this Saturday (November 29), however, another dimension of the issue needs urgent attention: tax systems.

Efficient tax systems underpin development. Rich countries rely on taxes to finance aid flows. In developing countries, locally generated taxes are a much bigger source of development finance than aid. Effective tax systems, based on cooperative relationships between governments, businesses and individuals, are a bedrock for democracy and growth. When businesses and citizens form part of the formal economy, good tax administration can provide for pensions, social security payments and other instruments of the modern state.

But there’s a dark side. Tax dodgers in developed and developing countries deprive governments of revenues. Many take advantage of the lack of transparency in tax havens. Developing countries are estimated to lose to tax havens almost three times what they get from developed countries in aid. If taxes on assets hidden by tax dodgers were collected in their owners’ jurisdictions, billions of dollars could become available for financing development.

Fighting tax evasion calls for cooperation between developed and developing countries. At home governments must enact fair and effective policies and make it easy for taxpayers to comply with their obligations.

Internationally, they must push for greater transparency in cross-border financial transactions.

As incoming G20 chair, Britain must take up this challenge. It has played a lead role in OECD work on countering tax haven abuse, but more is needed. Ties with Commonwealth countries and dependencies that operate as offshore financial centres make it uniquely well placed to push for improved standards of transparency. At the same time, it can give a lead in helping developing countries improve their tax administration.

We need to be realistic. Developing countries often lack the resources to build effective tax systems. Citizens may be unwilling to pay on the grounds that governments misuse the funds. It can be difficult to implement fair taxation in low-income, agrarian economies. And the poor are often subject to an equivalent of tax, in bribes and informal fees.

But something can be done. The OECD’s decade-long drive against tax havens and evasion is bearing fruit in the form of bilateral treaties aimed at improving transparency and exchange of information. The trend is spreading beyond the OECD, with China and South Africa joining this campaign. At the same time, donor countries are helping poorer nations develop fair tax services.

Significantly, developing countries are joining forces too. An African Tax Administration Forum is being developed under the leadership of Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. By inviting governments to share good practices, it aims to improve service delivery and taxpayer education. Success will increase accountability, strengthen democracy and combat corruption.

In 2006, only $88m of a total $103bn in official development assistance from OECD countries was dedicated to tax-related tasks. But aid targeted at capacity building in revenue administrations is money well spent. Donor support to the Rwanda Revenue Authority brought a dramatic increase in tax revenue, from 9% of GDP in 1998 to 14.7% in 2005, with an equally significant effect on state accountability. We cannot allow the crisis to undermine such efforts.

The last time we faced a major global downturn, aid budgets fell dramatically — curtailing investment in agriculture, infrastructure, social welfare and political stability. Similar cuts now would be even more damaging, after volatility in commodity prices and a global food crisis have already hit the poor. Cuts may bring short-term savings to donor governments, but they would cost much more in the longer term in extra spending on security and humanitarian aid.

Earlier this week, OECD donors joined in an Aid Pledge to maintain aid flows consistent with promises at Gleneagles and elsewhere. If combined with a joint effort to fight tax evasion, the results for development could be significant. The OECD, as the leading international organisation with a mandate to work on tax policy, is committed to this objective. More effective tax systems in developed and developing countries would help to build a stronger, cleaner and fairer world economy. And they would help the poorest the most.

(Angel Gerri is Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.)

World – Tax evasion threat to development is a post from: Updated News