It is International Human Rights Day today and Malaysia, recently elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the term beginning 2022, will commence its role as a country in disgrace.
We are blacklisted by the US State Department in its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report 2021 – a shameful downgrade to the lowest point we previously reached in 2009 and 2015.
During the global pandemic alone, six Malaysian companies have had their goods banned from being imported into the US over allegations of forced labour in their operations.
Among them were public listed companies like Top Glove, Sime Darby Plantation, and FGV Holdings.
This consistency, like red marks on a human rights report card, is reflective of a government that places very little priority on human rights and has even less interest in making big improvements.
However, the launch of the National Action Plan on Forced Labour (NAPFL) this month is a welcome change from the usual denial that such atrocities like forced labour and people trafficking existed in Malaysia.
While we wait for the NAPFL to come into force, it seems Malaysia is being schooled on worker rights as they are forced back to the discussion table on the domestic worker MoU with Indonesia.
The country has placed a temporary freeze on their citizens coming to Malaysia until the inking of this crucial document.
It was revealed recently that Malaysia had not been able to agree to some key clauses in the MoU which had left the talks stalled for five years.
Malaysia may see these clauses as unreasonable, tall orders that employers cannot fulfil.
Indonesia, fed up with the gross ill-treatment of thousands of its citizens, is merely putting in place protection for workers who have no other avenue for redress.
Domestic worker death
One domestic worker who succumbed to her wounds is Adelina Lisao (known as Adelina Sau), who came to Malaysia in 2015 and died of multiple organ failure in 2018.
The final three years lived by this girl from East Nusa Tenggara epitomises the heart-breaking journey of thousands of women who come to Malaysia with dreams of sending home their paychecks to improve the lives of their children, parents, and even extended family.
By the time photos of Adelina first shook this nation in 2018, thousands of other women had arrived in Malaysia under similar questionable immigration status from various other Southeast Asian nations.
Some fled their abusive employers, some were abandoned with no money, food, or belongings, some are now in rescue shelters, some are never to be seen or heard from again by their loved ones back home and some, like Adelina, returned home in a wooden box.
Today, her swollen face photographed before she died is depicted on tote bags and T-shirts as a reminder that we live among murderers because the state has no political will to legislate better protection for domestic workers: local and migrant, documented or undocumented.
Two days ago, Human Resource Minister M Saravanan announced that Indonesia conceded one of its three main contentious clauses in an MoU between the two countries for the placement and protection of domestic workers in Malaysia.
A big win for Malaysia considering the five-year impasse on negotiations. The earlier MoU expired in 2015 and talks on a new MoU commenced in 2016.
On his trip to Indonesia this week, Saravanan said his Indonesian counterpart, Ida Fauziyah, agreed to replace the One-Maid-One-Task clause with Malaysia’s suggestion to cap the number of members per household to six, instead.
The guidelines under the One-Maid-One-Task may have fared better under a different title as it merely attempts to outline the job scopes for domestic workers.
This is hoped to prevent any potential for forced labour but that clause has now given way to Malaysia's suggestion – a domestic worker would only work in households with no more than six members.
While we wait for the details of this new clause, it begs to be asked if the six members will include a baby, or an elderly, or both.
What happens when a couple and their four children are joined by grandpa and grandma six months after the domestic worker starts her employment? Can she leave and seek employment elsewhere?
Forced labour begins at home
While there is an increasing number of Malaysian companies being blacklisted and their goods rejected owing to their alleged failure to meet minimum international labour standards, the country’s archaic labour laws offer a huge clue to the lackadaisical attitudes of the typical Malaysian employer toward worker rights.
The First Schedule under the country’s Employment Act is a key factor in sustaining forced labour elements in Malaysian homes as it explicitly denies basic labour rights to the domestic worker sector.
Basic rights like hours of work in a day, one day off in a week, and even maternity leave are denied to domestic workers, by law.
For domestic workers, Malaysian homes are their place of work which in today’s environment can vie to be listed as among the most dangerous workplaces in the world where workers stand to face degrading verbal and physical abuse and even succumb to death.
That said, is it any wonder that it can be hard for Malaysians to recognise clauses that promise worker protection like what Indonesia brought to the MoU talks?
Indonesia also asked for a RM1,500 minimum monthly salary and for the Maid-Online recruitment system to be abolished.
Adelina drew her last breath in February 2018, just one month after the Immigration Department introduced the Maid-Online recruitment system – a system very akin to online shopping for cheap and express maid recruitment.
Does it matter if Adelina’s murderer is convicted or walks free?
Even if she is sentenced to death, or the DPP decides to bring a new charge under a different penal code, will it change the oppression of domestic workers in Malaysian homes abetted by weak, discriminative labour laws, and poor enforcement?
The Indonesian government is very clear that amendments to any or all Malaysian labour laws would have no bearing on the clauses in the MoU.
Adelina was not the last domestic worker to have lost her life in Malaysia and many more have been sent home in wooden boxes, even before the trial for her murder has concluded. - Mkini
S VINOTHAA is an independent journalist who writes on women’s and workers’ issues.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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