THE yard of the Indonesian Manpower Placement and Protection Service Center in Ciracas, East Jakarta, seemed deserted at the end of July. The moratorium on deploying migrant workers to Saudi Arabia would be effective only two weeks ahead but already the number of migrant workers' recruitment firms handling departure documents there had drastically dropped.

"It used to be like a market here," Azis (not his real name) told Tempo. He works with a migra