Jakarta. Indonesia wants Japan to shorten its internship term to no more than a year, as Jakarta refuses to have its citizens work as “cheap labor” overseas.

Migrant Worker Protection Minister Abdul Kadir Karding said Wednesday that many Indonesians had traveled to Japan as interns. While Indonesia welcomed the initiative as it could lead to a transfer of knowledge, Jakarta feared that the internships could be a guise for cheap labor.

“We have no problem with internships, but please. … If it goes on for three years, that’s cheap labor," Karding told reporters in Jakarta.

“We [Indonesia] do need the internships. Ideally, internships should last no more than a year. At the end of the day, it is only a training program,” Karding said.

Karding was alluding to Japan’s technical intern training program. This is where Japan allows young foreign nationals to undergo practical training that can even last up to five years. The trainees may get promoted to what they call “specified skilled workers” or SSWs if they manage to achieve satisfactory completion of the training, thus a bigger paycheck. Japan urges companies to treat these foreign talents the same as their local employees. However, companies may reduce the SSWs’ wages if they lack language skills. Karding admitted that language barriers had become one of the biggest obstacles that Indonesians faced when working abroad.

The aging Japan has set a goal to hire 820,000 foreign talents under the SSW visa by 2029. According to Karding’s estimates, Indonesia has supplied approximately 10,181 SSWs, many of whom are working in construction, hospitality, and agriculture, among others. Efforts are underway to send more workers to Asia’s economic giant. His ministry also inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indonesian Business Council (IBC), which houses the country’s entrepreneurs, on that day, on promoting migrant workers’ placement and protection.

Arsjad Rasjid, who is part of the IBC’s Board of Trustees, gave his take on Karding’s internship concerns. 

“It’s not that we [Indonesia] don’t support internships, but it is about the duration and what comes next after the training program,” Arsjad told the press.

“What an intern earns is, of course, different from [full-time or contract] workers. There are also differences related to health insurance and contracts,” the seasoned businessman said.