REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Indonesian government will provide an entrepreneurship training program for domestic migrant workers to facilitate their working abroad.

The Indonesian Consul General in Hong Kong, Chalief Akbar, said on Thursday that the government would work together with the University of Gadjah Mada to provide the training.

The program was created to support President Joko Widodo's plan to impose a moratorium on sending unskilled migrant workers abroad in 2016.

"So, we need to prepare our migrant workers, who still work and live abroad, to be ready to work in their home country, and more importantly, to ensure that they are not tempted to go back to work as a domestic worker," Akbar explained.

"We want them to be more independent and work as entrepreneurs after returning to Indonesia."

Akbar said the training would focus on animal husbandry and agriculture, which had been sought by a majority of the migrant workers in Hong Kong, who had demanded more applicable training.

"In general, most of them come from villages, so they hope they can make a living from the farming," he noted.

The entrepreneurship training will be held in 2016, but the try-out will be start in Hong Kong in September this year.

According to the plan, the training will be conducted every Sunday, when all domestic migrant workers in Hong Kong have a holiday, with an evaluation being conducted every two months.

The training courses would involve imparting knowledge about how to formulate a business plan for developing the animal husbandry and agriculture sectors.

"At first, trainers will be recruited from the Gadjah Mada University, who will train some local staff that can continue with the courses later," Akbar said.

The Indonesian government hopes that the program will be introduced in other countries, where most of its nationals work as domestic or unskilled migrant workers, such as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

Hong Kong was chosen as a pilot-project to implement the program because it employs around 151 Indonesians, or 4 percent of the total 2.8 million registered Indonesian migrant workers.

Based on the "e-perlindungan" website of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, most Indonesian migrants working in Hong Kong have a high school or equivalent high school's diploma.

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