Independent body needed to look into plight of duped migrant workers, says NGO

 

In February, FMT reported that more than 100 Bangladeshi migrant workers were found living in cramped conditions in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, after they were tricked into coming to Malaysia for non-existent jobs.

PETALING JAYA: A migrant worker rights group has called for an independent commission to be established to investigate how bogus employers are permitted to recruit large numbers of migrant workers.

In a statement, Tenaganita said the independent commission should also look into whether due diligence was exercised in the recruitment of these workers, and the corrective and preventative measures that needed to be put in place.

Tenaganita director Joseph Paul Maliamauv said the statement was issued in conjunction with Labour Day today to draw attention to the plight of thousands of migrant workers who had come to Malaysia with valid documents issued by the relevant government agencies, only to find out that they did not have any jobs waiting for them as promised.

He said these workers were crammed into hostels and hardly given any food, with many preferring to run away to search for any job that would earn them some money.

“But then, they now become undocumented, irregular, illegal… there is no shortage of terms to describe these victims of labour trafficking in which the government is inextricably complicit,” said Maliamauv.

“None of these terms accurately point to the fact that the workers are victims, but instead suggest that they are the ones at fault.

“The government has shown no interest or attempt to find out how these migrants became undocumented, nor is there any meaningful redress mechanism for those who became undocumented through the actions or negligence of others.

“The real tragedy is that all these migrant workers would have paid at least RM25,000 each to recruiting agents, with money borrowed at exorbitant interest rates.

“Each day they spend in Malaysia without a job adds to their debt burden (and they are left) worrying about their loved ones whom they have left behind. The psychological pressure is immense, so much so that some have died from stress or even committed suicide.”

Among the bogus companies found by Tenaganita to have recruited migrant workers were one which was newly incorporated and had not carried out any business activities, another that had been consistently making losses, and one that did not have audited accounts.

Maliamauv said the government should acknowledge its duty of care for these migrant workers since the root cause of the problem is its issuance of quotas and valid documents to bring them in.

Accordingly, Maliamauv said the government should use its resources – such as the levy collected from the workers – to provide temporary financial assistance to employers who are genuinely unable to meet their financial obligations to the migrant workers whom they had recruited.

He also called on the human resources ministry, through its appropriate agencies, to set up a labour exchange for these unemployed migrant workers from where genuine employers could recruit workers.

Last month, experts appointed by the United Nations’s Human Rights Council said they were dismayed by reports about the “dire humanitarian situation” faced by Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia amid “exploitation, criminalisation and other human rights abuses”.

In the statement, the UN experts said Bangladeshi migrants were being recruited by fake companies and made to pay exorbitant recruitment fees to come into Malaysia, pushing them into debt bondage.

They said many of them found upon arrival in Malaysia that the jobs they were promised were non-existent. As a result, they were often forced into overstaying, putting them at risk of arrest, detention, ill-treatment and deportation.

The report also expressed concern at the large sums of money the fraudulent recruitment generates for criminal networks operating between Malaysia and Bangladesh. - FMT