'Forced labourers' owed wages flee glove maker, replaced by other migrants

 

Twenty Bangladeshi workers who have allegedly been working under forced labour conditions and owed at least RM7,000 in wages each have called it quits and fled latex glove and condom maker SSN Medical Products Sdn Bhd in Balakong, Selangor.

But instead of paying the workers what they were allegedly owed, in response, the firm swiftly replaced them with Myanmar contract workers, the Bangladeshi workers told Malaysiakini.

Six of those who left were workers who had been pleading to be sent home after failing their medical tests last year - but their pleas had fallen on deaf ears, said Khan Sagor, 34, who represents the Bangladeshi workers.

Khan said only one worker was sent home because he had been bedridden for a few months.

Accusing the company management of defaulting on wages from some months in 2019 to 2021 plus overtime from last year, thre workers conducted a five-day strike last December and a second strike in February, for eight days.

However, they did not manage to recover all the outstanding wages.

Bangladeshi worker Khan Sagor

“The employer is happy the workers left because he saves between RM7,000 and RM8,000 per worker on outstanding wages he doesn’t have to pay out now.

“The workers who left were very quickly replaced with Myanmar contract workers, which showed us that there is a continued business for the company,” Khan said.

Workers fled despite fearing repercussions

Khan said this was despite the Labour Department’s raids on the factory and workers’ quarters last week.

“About 13 workers had fled before the raid but another seven workers left after the raid as they were desperate and had lost faith,” he said.

The International Labour Organisation states that various indicators of forced labour include restriction to workers’ freedom of movement, withholding of wages or identity documents, physical or sexual violence, threats and intimidation or fraudulent debt from which workers cannot escape.

Khan described their departure as a tearful one as they were reluctant to leave with no passport or work visa and feared the repercussions of being undocumented.

“All our passports have been withheld in the pretext of renewing our work permits but that too was never done,” he said.

Those who left, he said, were exasperated as they had pulled out all the stops to recover what they were owed, but to no avail.

Apart from the workers’ ‘down tools’ action twice, they also attended several mediation sessions with the employer through the Bangladeshi Embassy.

“We were also told that the embassy would remove us from SSN Medical Products and place us with an employer who could pay our salary, but we have not heard back from the embassy.

“Many of us have started running into debt back home because we were unable to make regular remittances,” he said.

SSN Medical Products under investigation

Earlier, the Labour Department and Social Security Organisation raided the company following complaints of unpaid wages.

Labour Department Senior Assistant Director Muhammad Rifaee Muhammad Saleh said the company had defaulted on overtime payments and was making unlawful deductions, Utusan Malaysia reported.  

Muhammad said the firm is being investigated under the Employment Act 1955, National Wages Consultative Council Act 2011 and the Employment Insurance System Act 2017 as it had defaulted on contributions for several years.

The company was also being investigated under the Workers’ Minimum Standards of Housing and Amenities Act 1990 (Act 446) as the workers’ accommodations were found to be inadequate.

SSN Medical Products director and majority shareholder Clinton Ang declined to comment when asked if he knew that his workers had fled the company.

According to data analytics provider, emis.com, SSN Medical Products reported a net sales revenue increase of 116.11 percent in 2021 with a total growth of 57.12 percent.

Integrated construction engineering company Vizione Holdings Bhd bought a majority stake in SSN Medical Products in 2020.

At the time, Vizione said the group also expects to inject RM30 million in capital expenditure to triple SSN Medical Product’s production capacity to 1.5 billion gloves per year from 2020 to 2022.

The company’s website states it has been exporting its products globally since 1997, including to the United States, South Africa and China.

‘Workers trapped in forced labour, then trafficked’

Adrian Pereira, the executive director of a migrant labour rights NGO, North-South Initiative, said the migrant worker management in Malaysia needed a reset as the current procedures emulated the Kafala system of the Middle East, which keeps workers bound to employers despite exploitative circumstances.

“Workers here are trapped in forced labour conditions, but even if there are systems in place that allow migrant workers to change employers, the opportunity to do so is very limited and almost impossible for a low literacy migrant worker to execute.

“Many workers complained about having to fork out RM8,000 in recalibration fees and this shows the monitoring system has some serious flaws.

“Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Human Resources Minister V Sivakumar really need to show that they are serious in addressing forced labour in the country,” Adrian said.

North-South Initiative executive director Adrian Pereira

He also expressed concern that SSN Medical Products workers who were currently at large were in a very vulnerable situation.

Adrian explained that the workers who fled their forced labour conditions are now considered undocumented migrants and vulnerable to arrests and falling into a new cycle of debt in order to get a new job.

“This is how migrant workers are trafficked within the country,” Adrian said, describing some issues that perpetuated forced labour and trafficking in the migrant labour force. - Mkini