Weed out middlemen to end exploitation of workers

 

For more than 15 years, groups involved in human rights, workers rights and the lot have been saying it. Their voices were supported by lawyers and experts who had dealt with such cases. No one bothered to listen – neither the employers nor the government. Protests and petitions were ignored; reports to the authorities ended up in the bin, and the stand was that we needed foreign labour to bolster bottom lines of the industry.

Even reports of exploitation of foreign workers were pooh-poohed and dismissed as “Western attempts to derail our economy” and the thirst for cheap labour continued unabatedly. Even the threat of sanctions did not bring about changes and the stand taken was that: “We will cross the bridge when we come to it.”

The use of agents and agencies to recruit foreign workers is a double whammy – payments are made in the source country (to get recruited) and again when they start earning (getting employment) in Malaysia. There are far too many sob stories of foreign workers having to work for the first six months just to pay off their home country agents.

But it has taken foreign groups to bolster these pleas and take it to their respective governments to bring about some form of action. It has succeeded. Some Malaysian companies are running helter-skelter to remedy the situation and provide relief for those affected by the system which is said to be corrupted and infested with middlemen demanding for their share of the spoils.

The good news is that one of the companies involved - Top Glove - is purportedly compensating some of its migrant workers up to nearly RM20,000 per person as part of its efforts to resolve a US Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) import ban.

(The payments are to compensate migrant workers who were forced to pay recruitment fees to agencies in order to gain employment with the company.)

Malaysiakini quoted labour activist Andy Hall as saying that about 12,000 migrant workers who are currently in the company's employment are expected to receive compensation which supposedly varies based on their nationalities as well as their date of recruitment.

Top Glove workers

While compensation may be the temporary answer to act as a deterrent to exploitation (and to lift the sanctions), there are other vulnerable groups in the services sector working in restaurants, sundry shops, hawker centres, pasar malam and also for cleaning contractors, maintenance firms and even in the funeral services industry.

While big firms and conglomerates are targeted, workers, especially in the food and beverage industry, work long hours without rest days and the lot. They seem to be the forgotten lot and their woes are not mere monetary but mental and physical as well.

A former managing director of a media company who wanted to take his cousin from India who was working in a restaurant home for the Deepavali was told: “You can take him but please pay me two days wages to get someone to replace him.”

Allow direct employment

Then there are others with “connections” who get the approval to bring in large numbers of foreign workers and subsequently “lease’ them to those needing labour. At least in one case that I know, a restauranteur who obtained permits recruited foreign workers and made a tidy sum under the pajak system where the workers are sent to work in other restaurants.

The problem is existent because of the policy of making it compulsory for employers to go through agents. Wouldn’t it be easier for big organisations like construction companies and manufacturers to send their personnel manager or recruitment officer overseas to select the candidates and employ them directly?

The process could involve taking the travel documents of the selected employees to the Malaysian embassy or high commission in the source country to get a landing pass. On arrival in Malaysia, the employer can be given two weeks to do the necessary paperwork sans any agent, pay the levy and employ the foreign workers legally.

This idea was mooted before but it was dismissed. Well, because the gravy train will come to an abrupt halt and the recruitment agents can no longer expend large sums of money to their middlemen and cronies. In the meantime, the worker will continue to toil for months just to pay off the debt incurred to pay the agents.

While rates for the commercial sector vary, the New Straits Times had previously reported that an employment agency charges between RM12,000 and RM18,000 for foreign domestic helper. However, the official rate fixed by the Malaysian and Indonesian governments is only RM8,000. The agency fee makes up the bulk of the cost as these agencies supposedly take away the stress of hiring a domestic helper by recruiting, obtaining a work visa and training the maid.

Unless there is a concerted effort by government agencies to weed out such exploitation, human rights groups will continue to make representation to foreign governments to impose sanctions. We seem to be reactive and not proactive to prevent a recurrence. Isn’t it time for some kind of regulations to be promulgated to put an end to this?

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R NADESWARAN has raised this issue in seminars and discussions but there seems to be no firm commitment from the government. Comments: citizen.nades22@gmail.com - Mkini

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.