A team of volunteers monitoring the amnesty program for Indonesian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia has urged President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to lobby Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to extend the grace period for undocumented Indonesian workers.

The 19-member team led by Bapak Wardhana, Indonesia’s deputy foreign minister, arrived in Jeddah to liaison with Saudi and Indonesian officials.

“Indonesia has not formally asked the Saudi government to extend the grace period but it has sent a note to the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs informing it of the difficulties faced by the workers in rectifying their status and asked for a solution,” said Ahrul Tsani Fathurrahman, a spokesman of the Indonesian Embassy.

He said: “Until Oct .29, there were 89,557 Indonesian workers, who visited the Consulate General in Jeddah to take advantage of the amnesty policy of Saudi Arabia, and they were issued documents called SPLP (Surat Perjalanan Laksana Paspor), to rectify their status.”

He said that he is not aware of the exact numbers, who have succeeded in transferring their sponsorship. New passports and those who legalized their status exceed 12,492 Indonesian workers.

“The real number I believe is larger than that,” said Fathurrahman. “As for the number of them who has got final exit visa and left the Kingdom, it is around 5,000.”

Asked about the visit of the Indonesian deputy foreign minister and the team of officials to the Kingdom, he said that Deputy Foreign Minister Wardana is in Jeddah to directly monitor the process of status correction of the country’s nationals.

He is being supported by a technical assistance team headed by Tatang Budi Utama Razak, director of Protection for Indonesian citizens and legal entities.

“The team wants Saudi Arabia to grant an extension after Nov. 3, the date when the government has said it would begin punishing undocumented workers and their employers,” said the team in a statement. “A total of 5,018 Indonesian workers have approached the embassy in Riyadh for legalizing their status including 1,606 workers who want to go back home,” said Fathurrahman.

With the deadline looming, Indonesian overstayers in Saudi Arabia are in panic and facing homelessness because thousands of them have still not legalized their status, said Fathurrahman, while referring to the thousands of workers currently stranded in Jeddah.

Many Saudi employers have terminated contracts with their Indonesian workers overstaying their visas or deserted the workers for fear of being fined or otherwise punished by the government.