Indonesian private tutor Patricia has been learning German for two years, armed with a dream of leaving for Europe and driven by a lack of opportunities, economic stagnation and little hope at home.
She is one of thousands of Indonesians on social media promoting a popular hashtag that translates as “let’s just escape for now.”
Anger at the quality of life in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy — a nation of 280 million known for pervasive corruption and nepotism — has stirred student protests, and driven young and middle-aged professionals to seek jobs abroad.
Photo: AFP
“After working for so many years, my income remains about the same ... meanwhile my needs are increasing,” said the 39-year-old in the capital, Jakarta, who declined to give her surname. “I don’t own a house or car ... if I keep working like this, it will probably never be enough.”
In the past month, the hashtag has picked up steam. It has racked up thousands of mentions and reached more than 65 million accounts, analytics firm Brand24 said.
The outpouring has coincided with student-led protests against wide-ranging government budget cuts by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
Savings have been channeled into a new multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund — that reports to the former general.
There were nearly 7.5 million unemployed people in Indonesia in August last year, according to the latest data from the statistics agency.
That has stoked anger against a perceived poor quality of life, as the divide between the emerging nation’s rich and poor grows wider, and the middle class is squeezed.
“After many strange policies and the change of president, I have shifted to feeling like I have to move abroad. It has become a primary necessity,” said Chyntia Utami, a 26-year-old technology worker in Jakarta. “I really feel it. I don’t get social assistance, and I have limited money to spend. Working is just about surviving day by day, month by month, not working with passion.”
Some Indonesians are taking more physically demanding jobs abroad to escape.
Randy Christian Saputra, 25, left an office job at a multinational consulting firm to do manual labor on a tomato farm in Australia.
“I’m tired of the system in Indonesia. If we look abroad, they usually have a better system,” he said.
Poor living standards in Jakarta encourage others to leave.
“The longer I stay in Jakarta, the harder it is because of pollution or traffic jams. It has more to do with the living standard,” said Favian Amrullah, a 27-year-old software engineer, who is leaving for a start-up in Amsterdam next month. “I am exhausted, and feeling hopeless.”
Some foreign companies are trying to capitalize on the trend, including Japanese recruitment firms posting online seeking to attract the most talented.
Experts said social media offers Indonesians an outlet where they feel heard.
“This showed the public’s emotion,” said Ika Karlina Idris, associate professor at Monash University Indonesia.
She said the hashtag highlighted “the public’s concerns about jobs and nepotism,” as well as at “haphazard public policies.”
The uproar sparked criticism from some government ministers. One even told those who wish to leave they should not return.
“Just run away, if necessary, don’t come back,” Indonesian Deputy Minister of Manpower Immanuel Ebenezer told a reporter last month.
He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pro-Prabowo influencers have also spread disinformation, aiming to undermine the credibility of protesters. A fact check team found more than a dozen TikTok videos pushing the baseless claim that student protesters are “paid,” which attracted more than 8 million views.
Pro-government and pro-Prabowo content creators then posted reaction videos amplifying the misinformation on YouTube and TikTok, garnering more than 2 million views.
Patricia remains undeterred, applying for a volunteer post in Germany in the hope that she can find a paid job once there.
“I want to fight there for a better job, life, a better income,” she said. “When I have a place there ... no, I won’t be returning to Indonesia.”
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
RSS