The Bangladeshi government is seeking to meet with Malaysian officials next month to discuss migrant workers’ recruitment to Malaysia.
This comes after United Nations experts last Friday expressed "dismay" over the mismanagement of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia, who arrived to find there was no employment waiting for them, forcing them to live in deplorable and uncertain conditions.
"We have offered for a meeting by May and it depends on the response from the Malaysian government.
“However, we’re trying to hold it sooner," secretary of the Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry Md Ruhul Amin told Bangladeshi newspaper, The Daily Star yesterday.
Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Shafiqur Rahman Chowdury also said the Bangladeshi government is reviewing the various allegations about the welfare of its people in Malaysia.
On Friday, UN Special Rapporteurs for human rights of migrants, slavery and trafficking in persons issued a strongly-worded statement saying that "the situation of Bangladeshi migrants who have lived in Malaysia for several months or longer is unsustainable and undignified".
“Malaysia needs to take urgent measures to address the dire humanitarian situation of migrants and protect them from exploitation, criminalisation and other human rights abuses,” they said.
They also urged the Malaysian and Bangladesh governments to address the situation, and for Malaysia to fulfil its obligations under the UN Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights to protect migrant workers.
“Malaysia must govern labour migration more effectively by adopting adequate safeguards,” the experts said.
The UN experts who issued the statement are Tomoya Obokata, special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences; Siobhán Mullally, special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children and Gehad Madi, special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
Other experts include Robert McCorquodale (chair-rapporteur), Fernanda Hopenhaym (vice-chair), Pichamon Yeophantong, Damilola Olawuyi, Elzbieta Karska of the working group on business and human rights.
READ MORE: Migrant worker import quota won via fake deals, then traded for millions
Over the past year, more than a thousand migrant workers have found themselves stranded in Malaysia, following instances of migrant quota fraud and other abuses.
Migrant quota fraud involves Malaysian companies using fraudulent documents to win lucrative quotas to import a large number of migrant workers, without actually having jobs for them.
The workers are then either sold to other employers or left stranded in the country, with no means to live or return to Bangladesh.
Some have lived like vagabonds, travelling with all their belongings from one factory to another, seeking employment. - Mkini
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