KITAS Rules
Tighten as Indonesia Reduces the Stay Period for Certain Expats
By: Stanley Anthony
The government recently reduced the stay period for expats
in certain industries. Here’s what workers in service, trading, and consulting
should consider.
Since last year, the KITAS—otherwise known as the temporary
resident card for foreigners in Indonesia—has become harder to come by. The
election year of 2014 was a confusing one for human resource departments across
the country, particularly with the fluid nature of KITAS regulations making
life difficult. Add to that rumours of an impending compulsory TOIFL (Test of
Indonesian as Foreign Language) and it’s easy to see why the 65,000 foreigners
currently on a KITAS may be following the developments with interest.
Some expats are already starting to feel the squeeze. At
least as much is confirmed by Marlissa Dessy, co-founder and director of
Indosight, a firm that provides legal support and market entry services to
foreign companies looking to set up shop in Indonesia.
“The amount of time recommended for a working visa has
changed from one year to six months for advisor positions in the service,
trading, and consulting sectors,” explains
Dessy, a bona fide veteran in the KITAS process. “The problem is that
the only positions available for foreigners in these three sectors are advisor
positions.” Dessy and the Indosight team confirm that the government published
this news online, but that it did not actually include a date on the article,
making it tough to pinpoint exactly when the new rule went into effect.
But that’s not the only change. The KITAS process, which
once took several weeks, is now also being drawn out due to other morphing
regulations. As a foreigner, you may be forgiven for thinking that Indonesia is
a welcoming place, unless of course you intend to work here.
Starting from the beginning, here are some changes that you
need to be aware of.
Tighter Manpower approval
The first step to getting a KITAS starts with your sponsor
company. They will need to obtain an IMTA (Izin Mempekerjakan Tenaga Kerja
Asing) from the department of Manpower, which will authorise the company to
hire foreign employees. This document will dictate the number of foreigners
that the company is permitted to hire along with the number of job titles that
it is permitted to assign. So if a company can hire five employees with two
titles, the intake might officially be four engineers and one director, for
example. In recent years, local companies have found the IMTA increasingly
difficult to obtain, according to a group of human resource officers who prefer
to remain anonymous.
The difficulty now occurs because the government is
requiring more specific qualifications to work in particular sectors. For
working foreigners, the first step to getting a KITAS is a VTT or Visa Tinggal
Terbatas. This is the initial stamp or sticker that you get from the Indonesian
embassy abroad, which is converted into a KITAS once you return to Indonesia.
Several years ago it was a case of simply providing your Passport, CV, and a
letter from your employer to obtain a VTT.
But now it’s more complicated, as many foreigners are hired
as Tenaga Ahli or “experts,” Immigration and Manpower are now requesting, or
rather demanding, that the employee’s educational background corresponds
directly with the scope of the sponsoring company. This means that to work as
an engineer in Indonesia you must have an engineering degree. The government is
also asking applicants to prove they have prior work experience—ideally five
years—in their prospective position. This is all to be confirmed by a
competence certificate or a letter of reference from a previous employer.
Not only are these changes a significant concern for
Indonesia’s popular English-teaching industry, which routinely hires graduates
from different fields, but also for current KITAS holders and skilled labourers
without formal qualifications, such as those found in the IT industry, for
example. As a further measure of inconvenience, transcripts and certificates
are required to have a Legalisir, or authorizing stamp from the educational
institution, in addition to being a colour photocopy. Some companies have been
successful in using locally notarised copies of these documents, but sources
prefer not to go on record.
Possible encouragement to hire locals
The application to secure your VTT must now also include
details of a Tenaga Pendamping or Indonesian working companion. The idea behind
this is that you are to train a junior Indonesian colleague throughout the
course of your time in Indonesia with the view that they will eventually be
able to replace you (in a professional capacity, of course). Practically, this
is a notion which companies must at least pay lip service to in order to submit
an application. Once all that, plus a mandatory HIV test, is in hand, it is up
to the Jakarta immigration office to grant you a VTT.
The validity of your visa will depend on a number of
factors, including the validity of your sponsor company’s labour permit, your
passport expiration date, and what is less clear, the amount of time Jakarta
immigration deems appropriate for your stay.
Generally an initial one-year application may be approved
for anywhere between 10 to 12 months, with no reasoning as to why the lengths
vary.
A recent study by Deloitte Indonesia says that the fourth
and fifth KITAS extensions also now need approval from the regional immigration
office, whereas previous extensions only required approval by the Directorate
General of Immigration. Deloitte says no official mention of an Indonesian test
or TOIFL has so far been required by those currently applying for a KITAS.
However, Indonesia’s Manpower Minister M. Hanif Dhakiri recently said the
language regulation would take effect in February.
The group of anonymous HR officers speculate that all these
changes may be a result of the recent events that took place in one of
Indonesia’s international schools. They were hesitant to make predictions
looking into the future.
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Source:
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