Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) commits to devote itself to community in Indonesia and overseas. One of the community services performed by UMY is providing supervision of a learning and teaching activity of Indonesia Migrant Workers (PMI) in Taiwan through Executive Branch Board of Muhammadiyah (PCIM) of Taiwan. Indeed, UMY will also commence a similar program for PMI in the Republic of South Korea.

On Friday (6/7) at Rector’s Lobby of UMY, Rector of UMY Gunawan Budiyanto, M.P. welcomed an Indonesian ambassador to South Korea Umar Hadi. Gunawan told that the program will undertake the program when the workers return to Indonesia. “The workers have a huge salary. It is about tens of millions. They also sign a working contract for three years and can be extended. The salary total is great so that they often confront culture shock when coming back to Indonesia,” he informed.

One of the reasons is that the workers get difficulties in moving from their safe zone. “We have to bear awareness that they will work in South Korea forever. They will go back to Indonesia. Noticing the condition of the workers, we think that need to supervise them so that they are ready and have plans after their contract ends. We will collaborate with PCIM of South Korea and we also can organize a c community service for students,” explained Gunawan.

Meanwhile, Umar informed that the workers do not know how to spend their money. “For instance, they would like to begin a business, but they have no idea how to start. Here, UMY can be a higher education institution to supervise them and provide them knowledge of financial literacy. UMY can also give training of life skills so that the workers are mentally prepared for returning to home country,” declared Umar.

Umar expected that UMY can directly provide the workers assistance, particularly in aspects of financial planning, health, and religion. “Besides financial issues, health and religion are other concerns to work in South Korea. They work physically and rarely do a medical checkup so that we have to remind them. In fact, they have to give them knowledge of religion and I think we have to introduce Muhamamdiyah to them,” he maintained.