Police: Three days remand for Klang-based cleaning company staff
The 51 workers said to have been ill-treated by their employer have been placed under protection pending investigations over the alleged forced labour elements in their employment.
The workers were rescued from a Klang-based cleaning service company yesterday in a raid conducted by various enforcement agencies.
The 51 workers said to have been ill-treated by their employer have been placed under protection pending investigations over the alleged forced labour elements in their employment.
The workers were rescued from a Klang-based cleaning service company yesterday in a raid conducted by various enforcement agencies including the police.
Klang Utara district police chief Nurulhuda Mohd Salleh (photo) said the 21-days Interim Protection Order was granted at the Klang Magistrates Court this morning.
"All 51 workers rescued have been placed in a safehouse.
"Investigations are ongoing over allegations that they have been made victims of forced labour," Nurulhuda told Malaysiakini.
The 51 workers comprise 44 Indonesians, six Cambodians and one Filipino.
It is understood that the company's owner is currently abroad.
Malaysiakini yesterday quoted sources who alerted to the multi-agency raid, conducted several weeks after a group of its former employees raised their alleged exploitation to international migrant workers' rights NGO, Migrant Care.
Aside from the 51 workers rescued, Nurulhuda said police have obtained a three-day remand order under section 12 of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants (Atipsom) Act 2007 against a Malaysian woman identified as a staff of the cleaning company.
Police also arrested and obtained a three-day remand order against a 54-year-old Filipino woman, believed to be staff of a manpower agency that shared the same premise.
Section 12 of the Atipsom Act deals with alleged trafficking for the purpose of exploiting the victims as forced labour.
A source from the Labour Department told Malaysiakini that the manpower agency staff is also being investigated under the Manpower Services Act 1981.
"As for the cleaning company, we also recorded a statement from the (remanded) staff who handled the workers' schedule," said the source.
Migrant Care country representative Alex Ong recently claimed that workers brought in to work for the cleaning services company were also farmed out as domestic helpers by its sister manpower agency.
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.
Malaysiakini had at the time 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".
When met by Malaysiakini recently, Ong had also alleged links between the cleaning services company and a former maid agency - which used to occupy the same premises raided today - that made headlines in 2012 for alleged labour trafficking offences.
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