Four ministries were very critical in advance on the project with which dozens of Indonesian nurses came to work and did an internship at Zorggroep Drenthe. Civil servants from The Hague were worried about exploitation and suspected that the students would be deployed as cheap workers. Yet the plans went on.
This is the conclusion of research by RTV Drenthe, Omroep Brabant and the NOS, for which documents were requested through the Open Government Act. The Brabantse Hogeschool Avans+ and Mediation Office Yomema from Waalwijk were planning to bring around 1,200 students from Indonesia to the Netherlands every year.
Especially officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) had major objections to the learning-work process. In a mail exchange from October 2021, the IND questioned the intention of the plans.
“In our view, this is primarily a construction to bring cheap workers from abroad to the Netherlands (my director used the word ‘exploitation’),” writes an industrial of the IND. “Why should graduated Indonesian care students have to follow an HBO course here for another four years, with the possibility of a year out?”
The civil servant writes that it is very difficult for Dutch HBO students to get an internship. For 1,200 Indonesian ‘students’ that is apparently no problem and the institutions are willing to pay three times as much for it than for a Dutch student. “
Despite the criticism of the IND, the first 64 Indonesian nurses came to the Netherlands in November 2021, spread over Zorggroep Drenthe and Woonzorg Flevoland.