Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran wants Human Resources Minister M Saravanan and Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin to clear up what he claims are contradictory policy statements.
He called on the pair to make a ministerial statement in Parliament to clarify their position on labour developments in Malaysia during the Covid-19 pandemic, between August 2020 and December 2021.
He said while Saravanan made a statement last September declaring Malaysia’s border remained closed to labour migration, Hamzah reported more than 6,000 domestic workers were granted entry.
Kulasegaran (above) said when the National Security Council and the cabinet declared borders closed, it looked like the Immigration Department initiated their own policy on labour migration.
“This was not in conformity with the government’s national policy.
“Meanwhile, Saravanan said no such thing would take place.
“He was either misinformed, misled, or was simply unfit to hold that post,” the former minister added.
Kulasegaran also questioned the governance of Malaysia saying the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing.
Suggesting an alternative, he said Saravanan should ask for clarification from Hamzah in the cabinet and reveal their findings to the public.
Indonesian trust deficit
Kulasegaran said he was concerned with the effect Hamzah’s statement would have on ties with Indonesia whose ambassador to Malaysia already expressed a lack of confidence in the Home Ministry’s commitment to implement their bilateral agreement.
“Now we may have a bigger problem with Indonesia.
“Instead of confidence building, you have destroyed the whole fabric of trust that was already fraying.
“We need to look at the entire process of how these abuses of power came about,” he added.
On Feb 7, the Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia Hermono told Malaysiakini the Immigration Department played a key role in implementing a bilateral agreement but was absent from most negotiation meetings.
Hermono, who goes by one name, indicated that trust was low that the Immigration Department would implement the clauses in the Memorandum of Understanding between Malaysia and Indonesia for the Employment and Protection of Domestic Workers.
The ambassador highlighted the same contradiction between Saravanan and Hamzah lamenting that the latter’s ministry was issuing MyTravelPass to allow Indonesian women to fly into Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Forced labour prevalent
Kulasegaran said with employers regulated, forced labour was still taking place and questioned the Maid Online System’s (SMO) contribution to the prevalence of these practices.
“The ministry was pretending that forced labour did not exist and the fact that Malaysia was in Tier 3 in the Trafficking in Persons Report did not matter to them,” he added.
Migrant Care country representative Alex Ong described Hamzah’s statistics report in Parliament as a revelation into the government’s bad practices in combating human trafficking through structural instruments like the SMO.
“It was also a confidence crisis arising from abuses of bilateral relations.
“In reality, there were more human trafficking and human smuggling activities stemming from SMO abuses that were not recorded in the immigration control management system,” he said, speaking from his experience as migrant rights activist. - Mkini
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