Treating migrant workers “like animals” during immigration raids should be unacceptable under the new Pakatan Harapan government, said Klang MP Charles Santiago (above).

“This is outrageous and totally unacceptable.

“Immigration officers should not treat migrant workers like animals, even if they are undocumented, for these workers are the victims of the existing system in our country,” said Charles who is also chairperson of the Asean Parliamentarian for Human Rights group.

He said this when contacted for a response to a viral Facebook post by an employer who detailed the harrowing experience faced by her domestic helper during an Immigration Department raid on Sunday.

Sunday was the first day of the department's latest crackdown dubbed “Ops Mega 3.0” following the end of the rehiring programme for undocumented migrant workers.

In her Facebook post, expatriate Lynn Townley claimed that her domestic helper was arrested along with some 300 other migrant workers around Kota Raya, Kuala Lumpur and taken to the immigration headquarters in Putrajaya for questioning.

“I was called by my helper who was in complete hysterics as she was loaded into a van, handcuffed, chained to ten other people suspected of working illegally.

“She not only had a copy of her passport but also a picture of her proper working visa to show the officers,” said Townley who said that she has been living in Malaysia for the past 13 years.

“But instead of checking the documents, they loaded everyone into trucks like animals and made them wait without water for over five hours, still chained together, even making them go to the bathroom chained as a group,” she claimed in her post.

Townley also shared a short video of the arrest and a photograph of the arrested workers purportedly taken at the Putrajaya Immigration headquarters, as well as two photographs, said to bruises on her domestic helper’s wrist from being handcuffed.

A check by Malaysiakini found that Townley’s post has since been shared over 3,000 times.

Charles urged the Immigration Department to make public its Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for such raids.

“And if the SOP cannot be made public, the raids must be stopped to prevent further abuse of the migrant workers,” he stressed.

Malaysiakini has contacted Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and Immigration Department director-general Mustafar Ali for comments on the allegations.

‘Home Minister must initiate reforms’

Charles also called on Muhyiddin and the new Pakatan Harapan government to address the root problem surrounding foreign labour recruitment, starting with corruption at all levels.

“He (Muhyiddin) should tackle corruption in the ministry and stop issuing new permits.

“Muhyiddin must also immediately set-up a special commission to look into the management of migrant workers in the country for this is already long overdue,” he stressed.

Charles noted that Muhyiddin should have known better than to sanction yet another major immigrant crackdown now as various similar operations (above) conducted during his tenure as deputy prime minister of the former BN government had failed to address the situation.

Among others, the previous BN government had launched the 6P programme in 2011 to legalise undocumented migrant workers while the two-year rehiring programme was conducted from Feb 15, 2016, to June 30, 2018.