In the wee hours of a December morning last year, four migrant Indonesian women tied a few bedsheets together and quietly climbed out the window from a third-floor apartment they were kept locked in.
They took this desperate action to escape their abusive employment agent, somewhere in Damansara.
The four women, aged between 26 and 42 years old, were new recruits from Central Java and Bali who were promised RM1,500 monthly salary for domestic work in Malaysia and travelled into the country between September and November in 2021, using approved MyTravelPasses.
Annisa, Dewi, Aulia and Budiwati (not their real names) eventually found refuge at the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur's (KBRI) shelter.
Telling their story to Malaysiakini, they said they were eager for employment and were attracted to the lucrative salary but alarm bells went off when they were each provided the MyTravelPass documentation and told to lie that they were coming to Malaysia for a social visit.
However, Dewi vividly recalled her first time in Malaysia and her refusal to lie. She walked up to the immigration clearance officer who questioned her on the purpose of the visit and who smiled at her when she informed him that she was in Malaysia for work.
Surprised at the ease by which she entered Malaysia via the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Dewi convinced herself and her new friends, Annisa, Aulia and Budiwati that they were not doing anything wrong.
“I decided not to question the description of our entry passes, which indicated travel and not work,” Dewi said.
At the time of their entry into the country, Malaysia was still in international ‘lockdown’ mode and the borders were closed to foreigners entering, especially to those on ‘travel’.
Meanwhile, Malaysians, too, were not allowed to enter or leave the country without MyTravelPass, which would only be issued for valid reasons.
On Sept 19 last year, in a media statement, Human Resource Minister M Saravanan reminded employers that there would be no entry of migrant workers, including domestic workers, into Malaysia until Dec 31 and that any decision to reverse this would be made only after discussions between the National Security Council (NSC), Human Resource Ministry, Home Ministry, Health Ministry and other relevant ministries.
“If we knew we were taking irregular channels, we would not have left home. We don’t want this,” Budiwati said, her voice low.
Breach of Indonesia’s temporary freeze
Indonesian Ambassador Hermono, who goes by one name, told Malaysiakini that from mid-December 2020, the immigration officers in Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta had turned away at least 10 women travelling to Malaysia using MyTravelPass.
Hermono said the arrival of Annisa, Dewi, Aulia and Budiwati to the embassy shelter alerted them that many newly recruited domestic workers holding MyTravelPass were being admitted into Malaysia and the government had put a stop to it in Jakarta.
“We will repatriate these four women and will also trace the names of their sponsors in Indonesia and investigate their activities to prevent more women from being trafficked into Malaysia,” he said.
Hermono told Malaysiakini on Dec 3 last year that Indonesia would stop sending its citizens to Malaysia as domestic workers until the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two countries for the recruitment and placement of Indonesian domestic workers was signed.
Read more: Freeze on Indonesian labour extended after 700 Covid deaths in August
However, while negotiations were still underway and borders remained closed for new recruits entering, Hermono said it was disappointing to note that the temporary freeze on labour movement into Malaysia was not preserved.
The loophole can be abused
A source from the Malaysian Immigration Department revealed that the MyTravelPass was extended to domestic workers with existing valid Temporary Employment Visit Pass (PLKS) to re-enter Malaysia and resume employment, sometime in June 2020, after the first movement control order was lifted.
However, a review of the Immigration Department’s guidelines for the “Application for Entry Permissions for Foreign Workers/Maid (VPTE)” on its official website lists an “SSM e-info” as one of the required documents to accompany the application.
The guidelines also indicate in bold that “application should be made by the employer” and that applications will be rejected if all the documents listed were not submitted through the MyTravelPass page on the website.
“If the domestic worker with an existing, valid PLKS was returning to their employer, there should not be a need for a company background information from the Companies Commission of Malaysia,” explained lawyer and mediator, CR Selva, who said the requirement for SSM information prevented employers from applying directly for the MyTravelPass for their respective worker.
“This creates an ambiguity as to who the applicant should be, because if you were an employer of a domestic worker, you may not necessarily have an SSM record.
“This requirement, which seems to be compulsory, indicates that applicants must be employment agencies,” Selva explained.
'The abusive agent set the tone'
While the other women waited to be selected by an employer before leaving the agent’s house, Budiwati said she had already been selected as the agent’s full-time domestic worker, but no salary was paid to her.
“Our passports, money, mobile phones, original identification cards and quarantine documentation were all confiscated.
“We worked every day, cleaning the same apartment, with no rest from 5am to 10pm, tolerating repeated verbal abuse,” she said, recalling that there were always as many as eight domestic workers in the house.
The women recalled that talking was not allowed and conversing in Javanese was absolutely forbidden.
“We slept on the floor between boxes and items stored in a separate apartment opposite the agent’s apartment and at 5am the next day, we had to ring a calling bell fixed inside this apartment that will alert the agent to open the door for us to start the day’s work at his house,” explained Aulia, adding that they were locked in every day and had no idea where they were, or which direction was the qibla to perform daily prayers.
Budiwati, also a Muslim, was forced to clean and cook pork for her employers.
Annisa said only after two months did they realise that they would be paid only if an employer took them and decided that employers may not be kinder than the agent’s treatment.
“So, we decided that we could not stay there anymore,” she said.
A hotbed for labour trafficking
Cautioning the authorities, Selva said allowing the usage of MyTravelPass for the entry of new labour recruits into Malaysia would turn this sector into a hotbed for labour trafficking and unprecedented degrees of forced labour.
Referring to the conclusions in the US State Department’s 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report on Malaysia, Selva said official complicity undermined anti-trafficking efforts, which were why immigration clearance documents such as the MyTravelPass had outlived its purpose.
Selva, who is currently pursuing his doctorate in human trafficking, said the TIP report had also explicitly recommended better labour protections for domestic workers and for investigations into allegations of abuse in this sector to be carried out, adding that “Malaysia was profiled as a country where migrant workers remained exposed to labour trafficking in households”.
He added: “These practices must change if we want to comply with the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking.”
Malaysiakini has contacted the Immigration Department over the report findings, but is yet to receive a response.
Lucrative business
A source from a local employment agency revealed that thanks to the MyTravelPass, they were able to bring in at least 50 new recruit domestic workers into Malaysia between 2020 and 2021.
The source explained that MyTravelPass negated the need for a Calling Visa or for the company to be a private employment agency registered and licensed with the Human Resources Ministry (APS), which would take more time and involve a lot more procedures, including 200 hours of training attended in the country of origin.
The employment agency source also revealed that bloated costs borne by employers had peaked at RM30,000 per domestic worker, which gave them an accumulated revenue close to RM700,000, over the past two years.
Annisa, Dewi, Aulia and Budiwati admitted that they were not trained to carry out domestic work before coming to Malaysia but braved themselves for the work, each with a dream of returning after two years with enough money to build or buy a new home, pay for their children’s education and improve their standard of living.
Back in Indonesia, Budiwati was the only one among them who was working as a non-live-in, full-time domestic worker while the others did jobs that ranged from administration work in a car showroom, packaging food ingredients at home on consignment and ironing and operating washing machines at a launderette.
“We were not trained but we were willing to do our best,” said Aulia.
National Association of Human Resources Malaysia (Pusma) president Zarina Ismail said she was disappointed to hear that new applications for domestic workers were being approved and workers were already entering the country on the MyTravelPass new application category.
She explained that the situation was becoming dire for employers and despite the labour freeze from Indonesia, many domestic workers from that country were still entering Malaysia.
'Allow Filipina domestic workers in'
Representing 1,027 APS, Zarina urged Saravanan to open the borders for Filipina domestic workers, following the new health SOPs, and allow them to commence work in Malaysia with Calling Visas as there was no labour freeze from this country.
She also urged the minister to formulate a process that would protect employers as well as domestic workers from Indonesia as the current system enabled employment agencies to bring in workers under false promises or even give false assurances to potential employers of their recruitment successes.
“Many desperate employers have been cheated of their deposits of up to RM10,000 to RM12,000 by people posing as agents who are never to be heard from after the money is deposited.
“Workers, on the other hand, fall prey to recruiters posing as sponsors in Indonesia. They find out only when they arrive in Malaysia that their salaries will be deducted to reimburse their employers, that their salaries or job scope are not what was promised and none of them is prepared for the verbal or sometimes physical abuse they will face.
“The current system does not protect the welfare and security of employer or workers,” Zarina said, explaining the burgeoning underworld of fraudulent practices in the domestic workers’ sector was becoming very serious and more people were attracted to the potential to make a lot of money in a very short time.
Slow developments on cartel
On Dec 1 last year, Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin set off alarm bells among immigration circles when he announced his knowledge of the existence of cartel activities involving the department's personnel in the country.
Hamzah revealed in his speech and at a press conference that followed, at the 2021 Immigration Day Celebration in Putrajaya on Dec 1, that among the tell-tale signs were advertisements offering temporary employment visit pass issuance services, which was a service that was never outsourced to agents.
Explaining, he said these advertisements were spotted in Sabah by his deputy, Jonathan Yasin, and stressed that the department had never appointed any agent for any immigration matters.
Hamzah declared that investigations would be made transparently to identify the officers involved with the cartel and action would be taken against those who abused their powers.
However, no other development on this matter has been announced since that day. - Mkini
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