Minister can protect domestic workers with one signature - group

Human Resources Minister M Saravanan has the power to accord full protection to domestic workers under Malaysian labour laws only with a single signature, a labour rights activist said.

Labour Rights Reform Coalition co-chairperson Irene Xavier said Saravanan can remove exemptions now in place under the First Schedule of the Employment Act 1955 that do not recognise domestic work as formal work to be granted full protection.

“It is within the minister's power to amend the first schedule.

"It just requires their signature. I can't think of anything easier than that," Irene said during a function yesterday in Kuala Lumpur, held to commemorate International Domestic Workers Day, which is celebrated annually on June 16.

The process is unlike any proposed amendments to the main body of law that must be tabled and passed in Parliament, followed by the Senate, before being gazetted and enforced.

Failure to do so, Irene said, will effectively undermine the government's efforts to eradicate forced labour - a problem identified not only within the formal sector but also in households employing domestic workers.

Identified forced labour indicators within the domestic workforce include movement restriction, physical and sexual violence, debt bondage and others, based on cases rescued from local households.

Human Resources Minister M Saravanan

Irene's call was made as part of larger demands by labour and migrant rights groups for Malaysia to ratify the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 189 on setting labour standards for domestic workers.

The groups, including Tenaganita, North-South Initiative and Pertimig, came together as the KeArah1989 movement with demands made on both Saravanan as well as Women, Families and Communities Development Minister Rina Harun.

"We call on the human resources minister to rethink and change his position.

"We also call on the women, family and communities development minister to understand that this discrimination is gender discrimination as domestic work is feminised work," Irene said in reading out the group's statement.

Amendments 'inadequate'

Exemptions under the First Schedule have remained despite recent amendments passed to the Employment Act, including changing the term "domestic servant" to "domestic employee".

Migrant rights groups had previously described the amendments as inadequate to grant basic protection for domestic workers.

Non-recognition of informal work under the First Schedule affects both migrant and local workers employed in a household, withholding basic rights, including minimum wage, paid time off, maternity benefits and others.

Also present during the event yesterday was the Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia, Hermono, who noted positive developments by Malaysia in efforts to eradicate forced labour, including ratification of the ILO Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, as well the adoption of the National Action Plan on Forced Labour 2021-2025.

Hermono said that while a memorandum of understanding signed between governments is not tlegally binding, there remains to be a moral commitment to fulfilling all agreed terms.

"Nobody will trust Malaysia again to sign any MOU if the terms are not fulfilled," he said in reference to the MOU on the protection of Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia that was signed in March to reopen the labour market.

Indonesia had set the MOU signing as a condition to allow the recruitment of formal workers in other sectors and Hermono revealed that 465 Indonesian workers have so far arrived in Malaysia.

"There have been a number of arrivals. For Sime Darby plantation, another plantation and a factory. I don't see any more issues now," he added.

Their arrivals mark an official reopening of the labour market with Indonesia, following an initial hiccup last month that saw the cancelled departure of over 100 plantation workers via a charter flight from Lombok. - Mkini