Migrant rights NGO questions dirty tactics by cleaning company
A Klang-based cleaning services company is under the authorities radar after a group of its former employees raised their alleged exploitation, according to international migrant workers' rights NGO, Migrant Care.
Migrant Care country representative Alex Ong, when met by Malaysiakini recently, alleged links between the cleaning services company and a former maid agency that made headlines in 2012 for alleged labour trafficking offences.
A Klang-based cleaning services company is under the authorities radar after a group of its former employees raised their alleged exploitation, according to international migrant workers' rights NGO, Migrant Care.
Migrant Care country representative Alex Ong, when met by Malaysiakini recently, alleged links between the cleaning services company and a former maid agency that made headlines in 2012 for alleged labour trafficking offences.
Based on its record of handling migrant workers related issues, Ong told Malaysiakini that initially, the cleaning services company's location had sounded familiar to him.
"We did some tracking in our old files as well as from the Internet and suddenly we found this (cleaning services) company was using the same address as that company (the maid agency)," he said.
Ong said he also verified the information obtained from several former workers of the cleaning company with records from the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM).
He then alerted relevant authorities who recently interviewed the workers.
Malaysiakini's checks on the company records confirmed that the cleaning services company shared the same registered and business addresses with another existing manpower agency.
The cleaning services company director's name also appeared as a director of the manpower agency.
Ong said further checks with the Association of Employment Agencies Malaysia's website revealed that the same address in Klang used to be the premises of the maid agency implicated in the 2012 case which saw 105 migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia rescued in an Immigration Department raid.
"That (the records) brings us to our conclusion of a link between the players," Ong said.
A source from the Labour Department confirmed that the two manpower agencies had the same address.
However, the source said their records showed that the directors of the agency implicated in the 2012 case were not the same as the new agency.
"The two agencies have the same address but different directors. The old company's licence expired in 2015 while the new one's license is still valid," the source told Malaysiakini.
In the current case, Ong claimed the workers brought in to work for the cleaning services company were also farmed out by the sister manpower agency as domestic helpers.
He said several employees of the cleaning company were recently let go after they attempted to protest against the alleged non-payment of their wages and other forced labour elements during their employment.
"After the workers complained, the employer quickly acted to get them repatriated," said Ong.
Malaysiakini sighted a check-out memo issued by the Immigration Department's Foreign Workers unit to one of the workers with the "general reason for exit" stated as "disciplinary problems".
The notice stated the worker was expected to leave Malaysia by end of this month but Ong said a request has been made for a delay pending ongoing investigations by the authorities.
Ong said questions which must be answered in this case include alleged corruption of the approval process for migrant workers' recruitment based on each employer's qualification.
He claimed the private cleaning services company was unqualified to hire foreign workers as it purportedly does not have any contract to supply such services.
On Wednesday, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Latheefa Koya had said that combating corruption linked to the recruitment of migrant workers should begin with returning the process back to the Human Resources Ministry.
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