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)

The Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia (KBRI) in Cairo is active in promoting Indonesia's tourism potential to the Egyptian people. Trade Attache of the Indonesian Embassy in Cairo, Irman Adi Purwanto Moefthi, said that so far the Egyptian people have only focused on tourism in Bali.

"Bali is the main destination for Egyptian honey moon tourism, it is already well known," said Irman to Pro 3 RRI, Saturday (22/10/2022).

For this reason, his party continues to increase tourism promotion to other regions in Indonesia to the Egyptian people. "We are promoting other areas such as Mount Bromo, Raja Ampat, which we continue to strive for so that the Egyptian people know him better," he said.

Not only tourism, the Indonesian Embassy in Cairo also invited 20 Egyptian business people to the Trade Expo Indonesia (TEI) event which was held at ICE BSD, Banten. During the visit, he said, Egyptian businessmen were interested in a number of Indonesian commodity products.

"Egyptian businessmen are very interested in Indonesian coffee products as well as palm products and their derivatives," said Irman.

Meanwhile, according to him, during the pandemic, trade relations between Indonesia and Egypt showed an increasing trend. It is noted that the total trade between Indonesia and Egypt increased from 1.1 billion dollars to 1.8 billion dollars.

"This is because Egyptian business actors still see Indonesia as an alternative country in Asia that can become a supplier of raw materials and necessities in Egypt," he said. (RRI)

The Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations condemned Russia's kidnapping of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant leadership and called for the immediate return of full control of the plant to Ukraine.

"We condemn Russia's repeated kidnapping of Ukrainian ZNPP (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant) leadership and staff," G7 Nonproliferation Directors General said in a statement dated Saturday.

"We urge Russia to immediately return full control of the ZNPP to its rightful sovereign owner, Ukraine," it said.

Russian forces have been in control of the nuclear plant, Europe's largest, since the early days of their invasion of Ukraine, which began in February. (Reuters)

China reported 998 new COVID-19 infections on Oct. 22, of which 207 were symptomatic and 791 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said on Sunday.

That compared with 1,006 new cases a day earlier – 215 symptomatic and 791 asymptomatic infections, which China counts separately.

There were no new deaths, the same as the previous day, keeping fatalities at 5,226. As of Saturday, mainland China had confirmed 257,362 cases with symptoms.

China's capital Beijing reported seven symptomatic cases and one asymptomatic case, compared with 18 symptomatic and one asymptomatic cases the previous day, local government data showed.

Financial hub Shanghai reported no symptomatic and 12 asymptomatic cases, compared with no symptomatic and 16 asymptomatic cases a day before, the local health authority reported.

The southern technology hub of Shenzhen reported 11 new locally transmitted COVID infections, compared with 10 infections the day before. (Reuters)