PETALING JAYA: Four Bangladeshi men filed police reports at the Sentul police station last night after claiming that their employer had failed to provide them with jobs despite them being in the country for more than seven months.
The men, who said they are being housed in Chow Kit, came to Malaysia in October after being promised a monthly pay of RM1,500 to work for a construction company.
“From the first day we entered Malaysia until today, we have not been given any jobs or salary. A total of 161 workers, including us, are suffering,” they said.
“It has already been more than seven months and we are still jobless. We don’t have any money to buy food.
“All our passports are being withheld by our employer, who wants us to pay RM6,000 to get them back.”
The men were accompanied to the police station by representatives from Parti Sosialis Malaysia, who are working with migrant rights activist Andy Hall to secure funding for their legal and humanitarian support.
The men said several of them had raised their plight with the labour department office in Subang Jaya on Jan 4 but received no feedback for two months. They were then directed to the department’s headquarters in Putrajaya.
They said they were informed by an officer at the headquarters that their employer had been told to either send them back to Bangladesh or help them secure new employers.
They said the employer was also asked to pay the wages due to them since they entered the country in October, adding that the office is still waiting for feedback from the employer.
“We are filing a police report now as we hope the police will intervene in this matter to get our passports back from the employer,” they said.
Last month, home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail and human resources minister Steven Sim said that employers who withhold workers’ passports and fail to pay them wages must face legal action under the Immigration Act 1959/63 and the Employment Act 1955.
This came after FMT reported that a company in Cheras, which recruited 94 Bangladeshi workers, had failed to provide them with jobs, proper living quarters or adequate food.
Saifuddin and Sim said such companies would also face charges under the Employees’ Minimum Standards of Housing, Accommodations and Amenities Act 1990 for failing to provide proper accommodation, and would be investigated under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007.
Their approval letters and remaining quotas for foreign workers meanwhile will be cancelled, and they will be blacklisted from applying for foreign workers in the future, they said. - FMT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.