"President Jokowi's effort to restructure the human trafficking crime task force is very appropriate. Quick and firm steps are needed to deal with the human trafficking crime problem," he said in a written statement received on Thursday.
The state must be present to protect its people from human trafficking, Soesatyo added.
According to the Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Protection Agency (BP2MI), the number of returned Indonesian corpses who died due to human trafficking in a year could reach more than 1,900, he noted.
"The state must prove its presence in protecting its people from human trafficking. Take firm action against all perpetrators without exception," he stressed.
He further said that based on data from the Women's and Children's Protection Online Information System (Simfoni PPA), in the period from 2017 to 2022, at least 2,605 cases of human trafficking were recorded in Indonesia.
Of the total victims, 50.97 percent were children, 46.14 percent were women, and 2.89 percent were men.
The MPR Speaker said that 85 percent of human trafficking cases were reported in border areas, for example, in North Sumatra, Riau Islands, and North Kalimantan.
"This happens because border areas are very prone to becoming a place for smuggling non-procedural Indonesian migrant workers," he explained.
According to him, one of the reasons behind the rise in human trafficking cases is that people in the regions have not yet been educated about the modes used by human trafficking mafias, which reflects the weak cross-sectoral coordination in providing information to vulnerable groups.
To this end, he asked the central and regional governments as well as other relevant institutions to identify regions in the country that are prone to human trafficking.
He said that apart from boosting the dissemination of information, a task force needs to be formed in those regions to supervise the recruitment of workers, especially migrant workers.
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Translator: Fath Putra, Raka Adji
Editor: Sri Haryati
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