Solving the TKI’s gift-giving problems © Duncan Graham 2007
The end of the Muslim Ramadan fasting month in mid October is a time of reconciliation and the seeking of forgiveness. It’s also the occasion for family gift giving.
That’s not easy if you’re among Indonesia’s 2.5 million overseas workers who want to send home presents or cash.
Bank transfers are probably the safest, though heavy commissions are often charged for exchanging the local currency into rupiah, and then shifting it from bank to bank. And for many Tenaga Kerja Indonesia (TKI – the Indonesian overseas labor force) banks are strange and forbidding institutions.
Giving relatives in Indonesia a cash withdrawal card they can use at an ATM is handy, though only if you can trust them not to lend the card to others.
Trust is a factor in short supply in Indonesia, according to Hong Kong entrepreneur Wiwik Lo. She should know; before she became the joint owner of a major trading company in the former British colony she was a TKI maid from a village near Blitar in East Java.
In that position she saw all the rip-offs, and not always by immoral bureaucrats and businesspeople. So-called friends and even close family members found their honesty hard tested when entrusted with carrying a big sum on behalf of a domestic worker.
Sometimes not all the money arrived at the destination. Stories abound of cash and courier vanishing.
“I don’t know why there’s so much dishonesty,” said Wiwik, 34, now joint director of JIL Indonesia Limited. “Corruption is a serious problem.”
So with her husband David she sought a solution; why not set up a business that allows the TKI to pay the money to a reputable firm that then arranges for goods, not cash, to be delivered to the domestic worker’s family back home?
The idea was an instant snap-on. What started as a one-room two-person show in a harbor-side shopping center has now spread to two floors and 140 employees in Hong Kong and Indonesia.
Every month 16 containers full of goods for Indonesian families leaves Hong Kong port. During Idul Fitri (the celebration at the end of the fasting month) that number has jumped to 21. JIL is now planning to expand into Macau, Taiwan and Thailand.
The company offers several services; for HK $ 429 (US $55) a 45 kilogram Sembako (basic necessities) parcel will be delivered directly to the TKI’s family wherever they live in the main islands of the archipelago.
Alternatively the domestic worker can do her own buying in Hong Kong, have the goods packed and sent door-to-door back to Indonesia for HK $ 10 (US $1.30) a kilogram.
It used to cost HK $14 but other companies noting JIL’s success have tried to undercut the business. “We’ve had to trim our profit margin, but our business has increased,” Wiwik said. “Turnover is huge and growing. We have to run two shifts a day to cope.”
Another option is for the TKI to select and pay for bigger goods like motorcycles, fridges and television sets from a catalogue in Hong Kong. Agents then buy in Indonesia and organize for direct delivery to the selected recipient.
Wiwik, who arrived in Hong Kong as a naïve and nervous teenager 15 years ago, is now one of the most famous Indonesian maid-to-made-it stories in the region, appearing on television and sponsoring Independence Day events and welfare programs for TKI.
She has become a Hong Kong citizen and taught herself Cantonese which she handles fluently. Her intimate knowledge of Indonesian behavior and thinking has helped her establish systems that she thinks are close to 100 per cent cheat proof.
It’s not enough that the donor should sign a consignment note authenticating contents; she also has her photo taken alongside the packaging with the dispatch number so she can’t claim a mix up later – though the most devious sometimes argue that the picture has been doctored.
Packing has to be tightly supervised to ensure pornographic VCDs and other baddies aren’t included. They also have to watch for maids using the service to smuggle commercial goods into Indonesia for resale on behalf of businesspeople.
The company tries to employ Indonesians but the Hong Kong government bans male TKI. So almost all the lugging and heaving at JIL has to be done by Indonesian women.
Goods are triple-packed in Hong Kong to deter pilfering by dishonest drivers carting the goods to villages in Indonesia. If the contents don’t arrive as listed, or the carrier claims an extra fee, he’s penalized by the company double the value of the attempted rip-off.
“We guarantee that we’ll deliver,” Wiwik said. “It’s important in business to treat customers with respect and handle their complaints seriously. If the listed goods don’t arrive we can be contacted by phone and will trace the problem.
“Usually it turns out that family members have plundered the package and stolen the sandals for Mum before she can open the box.
“We have to be very careful in selecting staff and agents. There has to be a strong and close relationship between workers and bosses. I delegate responsibility. If I catch anyone cheating or being idle they get one warning. If they do it again, they’re out.”
Wiwik, and her husband David, who she met through a mutual friend in Jakarta, are hands-on bosses. In the chaos of the packing, storing and checking they are everywhere. Little slips past their sharp-eyed attention.
“We work as a team,” Wiwik said. “I came from a poor but strong farming family where I was taught to work hard. I’ve never forgotten that lesson.
“Unfortunately Indonesians have a reputation for laziness. We are also disadvantaged by our love of protocol and status. I’m not the sort of woman who wants to leave business to my husband and lead a social life dressed in the best batik lording it over others. I don’t look down on anyone.
(A major complaint by maids is the contempt shown to them by their fellow citizens working for airlines and the government.)
“There are huge opportunities for business in Hong Kong. I’d be so happy if others could find success. I just wish Indonesia was as organized and disciplined as other nations. When I go back to Indonesia I feel so much pity for the people.
“Maybe it will change some day. Maybe. But the pressure has got to come from below.
“I want to show the people of Hong Kong through my company that Indonesians are capable, and can be as good in business as anyone else.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 18 October 07)
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FAITH IN INDONESIA
The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how we communicate the values of our society to others than by military or diplomatic superiority. William Fulbright, 1964
Showing posts with label Hong Kong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hong Kong. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
MOHAMMED FANANI
PUBLISH AND BE PROFITABLE © Duncan Graham 2007
When Mohammed Fanani first arrived in Hong Kong more than three years ago he was prone to weeping.
As a reporter in Jakarta he’d covered enough sad and sickening stories to grow the carapace that police, social workers, medics and other front-liners develop to handle the tragedies that befall the unlucky and unwary.
But the tales he encountered in the former British colony seemed unstoppable. “Indonesian maids who had been bashed and bleeding, their faces and bodies bruised and telling me their tales in despair were too much,” he said. “I cried when I met them and heard what had happened. These are courageous women – I respect them.”
Fanani is tougher now, though not because the stories have diminished. As editor of Suara (Voice), the principal Indonesian language newspaper in Hong Kong, he exposes domestic violence, contract rip-offs and pay rorts that make life for some TKI (Tenaga Kerja Indonesia – Indonesian labor force) real anguish.
A page one story reported a welfare group claim that Indonesian maids were being shortchanged by US $55 million (Rp 500 billion) a year. The story alleged some recruitment agents were urging employers to pay less than the legal wage.
Being bashed by the boss for real or imagined misdemeanors is the dark side of the dream of working overseas to get cash for struggling families back home. But there are other perils of their own making.
Ninety Indonesians were in Hong Kong jails when this story was written, serving sentences for breaching visa conditions or committing crimes, like theft and drug use.
It’s a rich source of material for any wordsmith, but Fanani, 37, seems to be wearying of the litany of these predictable and numbing woes. There are welfare organizations, shelters and the Indonesian Consulate available for maids (the new euphemisms are ‘domestic workers’ or ‘home helpers’) who hit hardships, and they need to get tough, join unions, flex some political muscle and access help.
So Fanani is planning to move his paper into new directions while continuing to expose cheating agents and brutal bosses, and push for laws to be upheld.
He’s also got the guts to allow criticism of the Indonesian Consulate in his paper – risky because the bureaucrats could make life unpleasant, shut off contacts and bad-mouth his reputation among advertisers.
Suara has four other competitors in Hong Kong, but it’s the only paper that employs professional journalists from Indonesia. It’s no bland rag, like so many similar papers that rely on hand-outs and staying sweet with officials.
“Consulate staff regularly get angry with me, but in reality they support us,” Fanani said. In one edition Suara got stuck into the Consulate for alleged poor service to its nationals and being closed on Sundays, the only time maids can get away from their jobs to seek advice. Another story reported a public demo outside the building.
“We tell the truth and I think the advertisers believe that we’re a newspaper that’s trusted by the readers,” he said. “I uphold the traditions of fair and balanced journalism. We’re serious about our job.”
After graduating in Indonesian literature from Diponegoro University in Semarang, Fanani worked for a local newspaper, a journalists’ union and later with the Jakarta broadsheet Warta Kota.
Elsewhere in the world newspapers are struggling to maintain circulation as the new generation gets its information hotter and faster from television and the Internet. But Fanani is one lucky editor, bucking the trend big time.
When he first took over Suara eight months after it was started by a Hong Kong publisher that also produces a paper for Filipino maids, Fanani had 18 months to make the tabloid pay.
At the time it was a 16-page monthly with a giveaway circulation of 25,000. Now it comes out twice a month and has a print-run of 35,000, soon to be bumped to 50,000. Some editions run to 40 pages.
The growth is also due to a rising readership more aware of its rights and prepared to spend locally. In 2004 there were 75,000 Indonesian maids in Hong Kong. Now they’re pushing 110,000.
The journalism may be fine, but as the cynics say that’s just the stuff that fills the space between the ads. In this essential part of the equation Suara
is doing OK with a fiscally fit advertising-to-editorial ratio of 60 – 40, and sometimes more.
So Fanani and his bosses are winners and grinners in their splendid spacious office overlooking the harbor, views so seductive that it takes a major effort to concentrate on the job.
“Hong Kong is a great place to work, though not to live,” he said. Home is a 5 X 3.5 meter apartment which he shares with wife and son and costs about Rp 5 million a month.
Suara’s ads promote hand phones, banking and remittance services, and labor agencies. Lawyers are also starting to advertise, indicating there’s money in representing distressed homehelps who aren’t getting the aid they need from the nation’s officials.
Readers pick up their copies of Suara on Sundays when they gather in their thousands at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park for a mega gossip and to eat Indonesian food at nearby restaurants.
“Our research shows that they like funny stories about culture shock and they read these first,” Fanani said. “Then they take Suara home for the more serious news, so it gets into the houses of the wealthy. The paper uses copy from Tempo Interaktif, Sinar Harapan, Kompas, the South China Morning Post and other sources.
“We’re told there’s about 100,000 Indonesian Chinese living in Hong Kong, many of them doing business and who fled Indonesia after the 1998 anti-Chinese riots. We want to reach them with messages of investment and tourism.”
And also to turn around the myths about Indonesia in a Chinese city that knows little of the archipelago, apart from being a source of domestic labor and natural disasters.
“I want the people of Hong Kong to know that Indonesia has a relationship with China and the Chinese going back more than 1,000 years,” Fanani said. “We are a new multi-racial democracy with 20 million Chinese compared with six million in Hong Kong.
“We are not the nation that’s negatively portrayed in the Western media. Although my mother Rochmiyatun who still lives in my East Java hometown of Ngawi is not educated, she is very intelligent and accepting. She can live at peace with everyone whatever their background or belief.
“She has been a major influence in my philosophy of wanting the people of Hong Kong to realize that Indonesia is a great nation of peaceful people.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 20 September 2007)
##
When Mohammed Fanani first arrived in Hong Kong more than three years ago he was prone to weeping.
As a reporter in Jakarta he’d covered enough sad and sickening stories to grow the carapace that police, social workers, medics and other front-liners develop to handle the tragedies that befall the unlucky and unwary.
But the tales he encountered in the former British colony seemed unstoppable. “Indonesian maids who had been bashed and bleeding, their faces and bodies bruised and telling me their tales in despair were too much,” he said. “I cried when I met them and heard what had happened. These are courageous women – I respect them.”
Fanani is tougher now, though not because the stories have diminished. As editor of Suara (Voice), the principal Indonesian language newspaper in Hong Kong, he exposes domestic violence, contract rip-offs and pay rorts that make life for some TKI (Tenaga Kerja Indonesia – Indonesian labor force) real anguish.
A page one story reported a welfare group claim that Indonesian maids were being shortchanged by US $55 million (Rp 500 billion) a year. The story alleged some recruitment agents were urging employers to pay less than the legal wage.
Being bashed by the boss for real or imagined misdemeanors is the dark side of the dream of working overseas to get cash for struggling families back home. But there are other perils of their own making.
Ninety Indonesians were in Hong Kong jails when this story was written, serving sentences for breaching visa conditions or committing crimes, like theft and drug use.
It’s a rich source of material for any wordsmith, but Fanani, 37, seems to be wearying of the litany of these predictable and numbing woes. There are welfare organizations, shelters and the Indonesian Consulate available for maids (the new euphemisms are ‘domestic workers’ or ‘home helpers’) who hit hardships, and they need to get tough, join unions, flex some political muscle and access help.
So Fanani is planning to move his paper into new directions while continuing to expose cheating agents and brutal bosses, and push for laws to be upheld.
He’s also got the guts to allow criticism of the Indonesian Consulate in his paper – risky because the bureaucrats could make life unpleasant, shut off contacts and bad-mouth his reputation among advertisers.
Suara has four other competitors in Hong Kong, but it’s the only paper that employs professional journalists from Indonesia. It’s no bland rag, like so many similar papers that rely on hand-outs and staying sweet with officials.
“Consulate staff regularly get angry with me, but in reality they support us,” Fanani said. In one edition Suara got stuck into the Consulate for alleged poor service to its nationals and being closed on Sundays, the only time maids can get away from their jobs to seek advice. Another story reported a public demo outside the building.
“We tell the truth and I think the advertisers believe that we’re a newspaper that’s trusted by the readers,” he said. “I uphold the traditions of fair and balanced journalism. We’re serious about our job.”
After graduating in Indonesian literature from Diponegoro University in Semarang, Fanani worked for a local newspaper, a journalists’ union and later with the Jakarta broadsheet Warta Kota.
Elsewhere in the world newspapers are struggling to maintain circulation as the new generation gets its information hotter and faster from television and the Internet. But Fanani is one lucky editor, bucking the trend big time.
When he first took over Suara eight months after it was started by a Hong Kong publisher that also produces a paper for Filipino maids, Fanani had 18 months to make the tabloid pay.
At the time it was a 16-page monthly with a giveaway circulation of 25,000. Now it comes out twice a month and has a print-run of 35,000, soon to be bumped to 50,000. Some editions run to 40 pages.
The growth is also due to a rising readership more aware of its rights and prepared to spend locally. In 2004 there were 75,000 Indonesian maids in Hong Kong. Now they’re pushing 110,000.
The journalism may be fine, but as the cynics say that’s just the stuff that fills the space between the ads. In this essential part of the equation Suara
is doing OK with a fiscally fit advertising-to-editorial ratio of 60 – 40, and sometimes more.
So Fanani and his bosses are winners and grinners in their splendid spacious office overlooking the harbor, views so seductive that it takes a major effort to concentrate on the job.
“Hong Kong is a great place to work, though not to live,” he said. Home is a 5 X 3.5 meter apartment which he shares with wife and son and costs about Rp 5 million a month.
Suara’s ads promote hand phones, banking and remittance services, and labor agencies. Lawyers are also starting to advertise, indicating there’s money in representing distressed homehelps who aren’t getting the aid they need from the nation’s officials.
Readers pick up their copies of Suara on Sundays when they gather in their thousands at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park for a mega gossip and to eat Indonesian food at nearby restaurants.
“Our research shows that they like funny stories about culture shock and they read these first,” Fanani said. “Then they take Suara home for the more serious news, so it gets into the houses of the wealthy. The paper uses copy from Tempo Interaktif, Sinar Harapan, Kompas, the South China Morning Post and other sources.
“We’re told there’s about 100,000 Indonesian Chinese living in Hong Kong, many of them doing business and who fled Indonesia after the 1998 anti-Chinese riots. We want to reach them with messages of investment and tourism.”
And also to turn around the myths about Indonesia in a Chinese city that knows little of the archipelago, apart from being a source of domestic labor and natural disasters.
“I want the people of Hong Kong to know that Indonesia has a relationship with China and the Chinese going back more than 1,000 years,” Fanani said. “We are a new multi-racial democracy with 20 million Chinese compared with six million in Hong Kong.
“We are not the nation that’s negatively portrayed in the Western media. Although my mother Rochmiyatun who still lives in my East Java hometown of Ngawi is not educated, she is very intelligent and accepting. She can live at peace with everyone whatever their background or belief.
“She has been a major influence in my philosophy of wanting the people of Hong Kong to realize that Indonesia is a great nation of peaceful people.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 20 September 2007)
##
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