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KUALA LUMPUR—Like thousands of migrant workers Mir Hussein Wahab, 29, from Lahore,
Pakistan, is a victim of a new phenomenon called
jual-beli, a local Malay term that describes a human
trafficking racket that rakes in millions for
international syndicates.
Literally, jual-beli means ‘bought-sold’ and is used to
refer to the daily trading of goods in the local market.
In
recent months migrant workers have been persuaded to
part with hard cash to enter the country only to learn
that they were duped and left stranded without jobs,
money or assistance from their sponsor or authorities.
“They
are treated as a commodity and pay their way into the
country as documented workers and then abandoned to fend
for themselves,” said Agile Fernandez, migrant worker
coordinator with Tenaganita, a nongovernment
organization (NGO) that works to protect migrant workers
from exploitation.
Some pay
to enter the country as tourists but end up working
without permits and are arrested and released after
bribing officials. They may also pay to have their visas
extended.
”At
every turn people in the establishment—either
enforcement personnel, government officials, politicians
or businessmen—are making money out of the migrant
worker,” Fernandez told InterPress News Service (IPS).
“They
have simply become a commodity,” she said, adding that
an increasing number of migrant workers end up being
given two meals a day to work in sweat shops across the
country.
“There
are more and more migrant workers turning up without
jobs, without pay and destitute and left to fend for
themselves in a foreign country,” she said.
The
arrest, last month, of Datuk Wahid Md Don, director
general of the immigration department, and over a dozen
of his senior officers exposed the multimillion dollar
industry using foreign migrant workers as a trading
commodity.
Officials from the Anti-Corruption Agency seized cash
worth Malaysian Ringgit (RM) 600,000 ($185,800) and the
agency’s chief Ahmad Said Hamdan admitted that the
racket involved ‘‘the public, foreigners, government
officers and also syndicates,” and that the problem was
widespread in the country.
Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia’s more affluent economies, is a
major importer of foreign labor in the region. Migrant
workers, both legal and illegal, are estimated to form
2.6 million of its 10.5 million-strong workforce.
“I was
traded,” said Wahab, who paid RM8,000 ($2,441) to agents
here and in Pakistan, only to be abandoned at the Kuala
Lumpur international airport.
“Neither
agents nor the employers turned up,” he told IPS in an
interview. ”We were stranded and paid our way out of the
airport and now survive as illegal workers.”
Wahab’s
group originally consisted of 29 Pakistanis, but it has
since split up and the men are working in shops,
factories or restaurants across the country.
”Now I
only get two meals and a corner in the shop to sleep,”
Wahab said in passable Malay he had picked up. “I can’t
go home, my passport has expired and I have been
arrested and released at least seven times.”
The
corruption exposure comes even as the government
prepares to launch a massive exercise to arrest and
deport an estimated 1.6 million Filipino and Indonesian
migrant workers. Many of them are refugees from the
violent conflict in Mindanao, Southern Philippines.
”The
core problem is that Malaysia does not have a
comprehensive migrant worker policy that is holistic and
humanistic,” said Yap Swee Seng, executive director of
Suaram, a leading human rights organization. “Current
policies are reactive, ad hoc, wholly contradictory and
driven by political consideration,” he told IPS in an
interview.
There is
no single authority that oversees migrant-worker issues
in a holistic manner—recruitment, placement, work,
protection of rights, housing and living conditions,
combating abuse and exploitation and return to homeland.
“Everything is temporary, ad hoc and confusing,” Yap
said. “Rampant corruption is a key reason why migrant
workers end up being treated as a commodity.”
“The
solution is to hand over the migrant worker sector to
the human resources ministry to deal with it as a human
resource issue,” said Fernandez. ”Currently the home
ministry handles it because it is seen as a security
issue.”
Outsourcing recruitment must be banned, say rights
activists. Recruited foreign workers have to pay their
fees upfront and to agents on both sides. Agents recruit
more than they are allowed and simply ”dump” them on the
market even if no jobs are available.
Officials issue outsourcing licenses for hefty sums and
the more they issue, the more kickbacks they get.
Currently there are 277 outsourcing companies with
ridiculously high quotas to recruit foreign workers.
Licenses are usually given to politically-connected
people. ”Imagine the sums involved if you make RM5,000
($1,525) per worker and you have a recruit quota of
10,000 workers,’’ said Fernandez.
Prominent commentator Ramon Navaratnam, chairman of the
Centre for Policy Studies, said there is an urgent need
to revamp the entire system to prevent exploitation and
abuse and curb corruption.
“Outsourcing companies presently get their licenses from
the immigration department to recruit workers,”
Navaratnam told IPS. “This is unsatisfactory because it
is subject to and a major source of abuse and
corruption.”
“We also
want a reasonable wage scheme for workers. Low-income
workers are currently subject to exploitation due to the
poor employment conditions they undergo and are unable
to afford decent living, especially with rising rates of
inflation and an overall increase in the costs of
living,” said Navaratnam, who is also president of
Transparency International, Malaysia.
“There
is a great deal of confusion presently about the
management of foreign workers, the appointment of
agents, renewal of permits and licenses and role of
enforcement agencies,” he said, adding that the “chaotic
situation” reflects poorly on the country and requires
an “urgent and total” revamp of the entire system. |
