Nunukan, a transit for hope - a struggle for life
17 September 2002
M.R Aswi Reksaningtyas Nugroho, Indonesia Red Cross

Indonesian migrant workers fleeing Malaysia are being sheltered on the island of Nunukan while waiting to return to their homes elsewhere in Indonesia. Food, water, health and sanitation facilities are lacking but the Indonesia Red Cross is stepping up its efforts to ensure conditions are improved.


Thousands of migrant Indonesian workers, considered illegal by the Malaysian government and who fled the country before a new immigration law came into effect at the end of August, are now in a desperate plight.

The migrant workers, 162,000 of them who arrived on the island of Nunukan in Indonesia during the past four months, have returned to their homeland with no immediate jobs, homes, or access to health care. Nunukan is an exit and entry point for the Malaysian state of Sabah while the country itself attracts construction, plantation and service industry workers.

Although 68,000 of the migrant workers have travelled onto various Indonesian states and another 76,000 have returned to the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak with renewed work permits, approximately 18,000 people remain on Nunukan. The majority of the migrant workers are young adults aged 20 to 24, and a good third of them are women and about 3,000 are children under five.

They live camped out where they can - in shop verandahs, mosques or government buildings and dependent on food from emergency kitchens set up by the government or agencies. Often there is no proper sanitation or protection from the weather or the mosquitoes. The situation is aggravated by a lack of safe drinking water for the new arrivals.

Resident populations already experience water shortages in the dry season and the influx of returning workers has meant an added pressure on existing water resources. The price of bottled mineral water is three times higher than normal tap water and water cannot be boiled as there is a shortage of cooking utensils.

This lack of water has had its inevitable consequences. Sixty-eight people have so far died in the camps from diarrhoea, malaria and respiratory problems. Nunukan's only public health centre with 10 beds has been overwhelmed by the number of people that suddenly poured into the town.

On a three-day fact-finding visit, Mar'ie Muhammad, chairman of the Indonesian Red Cross saw for himself the difficult conditions that the migrant workers had to face, but they weren't all health-related problems. "We don't have enough food for all of them," he said.

The Indonesia Red Cross has set up a health post with two full-time doctors and three nurses and has provided 10 volunteers to work on a floating 200-bed government hospital that is currently en route to Nunukan. It also plans to establish an ambulance team and deploy specialist doctors, including a paediatrician, to support the local health centre on the island. Red Cross volunteers have also distributed 10,000 water purification tablets among the migrant workers.

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