VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The government has succeeded in repatriating five Indonesian crew members (ABK) with Letter of Guarantee (LG) status. The five crew members on the Belize-flagged MV Uniprofit ship were stranded in Taiwan for almost 7 months.

The repatriation was handled by the Taipei Indonesian Economic and Trade Office (IETO) and the Ministry of Manpower. This was stated by the Director General of Manpower Placement Development and Employment Opportunity Expansion (Binapenta and PKK) of the Ministry of Manpower, Suhartono.

"We are coordinating intensely with IETO in Taipei to carry out negotiations and other efforts," he said, Sunday (10/23/2022). The goal is that the crew members can be sent home as soon as possible.

According to Suhartono, the obstacles to their repatriation were due to the minimum safety manning regulations. Thus, Indonesian crew members cannot disembark to return to Indonesia before a replacement crew is available.

This is not the first time this kind of problem has occurred, where something similar happened in 2021. At that time, the Ministry of Manpower attempted to repatriate 105 crew members with LG status from Taiwan with almost the same problems as now.

That is because the work agreement has ended, but they cannot go home because there is no replacement crew yet. In addition, their salaries are not paid in full, some are not even paid at all.

Suhartono added that his party had monitored the repatriation process starting from picking up the crew at Kaohsiung Port. Then continue at Kaohsiung International Airport before arriving at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Saturday (23/10).

"Thank God the whole process went well," he said. Subsequently, the crew members were handed over to BP3MI Banten for the process of repatriation to their area of ​​origin.

The Director of Placement and Protection for the Ministry of Manpower, Rendra Setiawan, stated that the Indonesian government did not want this problem to repeat itself. Therefore, in the near future, his party will sit down with the Taiwanese government to find a solution to the problem with the crew.

The Ministry of Manpower previously also invited the Head of the Taipei Economic and Trade Office (TETO) in Jakarta. In this case, the government expressed a firm stance on resolving protracted problems against Indonesian crew members.

Moreover, there are still a number of Indonesian crew members from other ships that are still adrift in Taiwan. "They are the crew of the MV Jian Ye who are waiting to be repatriated because of the same problem," said Rendra. (RRI)