Indonesia Consulate General Sends Back Home 25 Workers from Dubai

London - The Indonesian Consulate General in Dubai said it has sent back home 25 Indonesian housemaids who asked for the return after working for some time the United Arab Emirates. Since January this year, the Consulate General has sent back home 50 Indonesian workers mostly housemaids from Dubai for similar reason, consul Adiguna Wijaya told London representative office of ANTARA news agency on Tuesday. The workers cited reasons for wanting to return home including wage being not paid, maltreatment, sexually abused by male employers, and being tortured. The Consulate General provided the workers with temporary accommodations, where they stayed there for two weeks and some for up to four months. They received medical treatment some admitted to hospital before they fully recovered and returned to Indonesia. They ran away to leave their work after they could no longer endure working for their employers, the consulate general said. Some of the workers complained they had been physically tortured for refusing to work as prostitutes, an official of the Consulate General said. The 25 workers have returned to their home towns in West Java, Central Java, Banten , East Java and West Nusa Tenggara. Acting Consul General Heru Sudradjat told the workers what they had experienced should serve as a good lesson that working abroad was not always as they expected . Heru asked the workers to tell their friends at home to think twice before deciding to go abroad to work as housemaids. Most of the workers have worked for years in other countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. They had no problem with their previous employers , "but you are not always lucky to have good employers," Heru said . (*)