Saravanan denies Bestinet founder part of labour supply 'syndicate'
Saravanan (above) said this after claims by labour agents in Dhaka that Mohd Amin was influencing the Malaysian government to limit the number of agencies allowed to supply labour to Malaysia to only 25.
Human Resources Minister M Saravanan had denied that Bangladesh-born Bestinet founder Mohd Amin Abdul Nor is part of a “syndicate” to supply labour from Bangladesh to Malaysia.
Saravanan (above) said this after claims by labour agents in Dhaka that Mohd Amin was influencing the Malaysian government to limit the number of agencies allowed to supply labour to Malaysia to only 25.
Bestinet is the company supplying the Foreign Workers Centralised Management System (FWCMS), an online system to manage imports of blue-collar foreign workers.
Asked if Mohd Amin is part of the labour supply “syndicate” alleged by Bangladesh labour recruitment agents, Saravanan dismissed the claim.
“He was from Bangladesh and is now a Malaysian citizen. He is the one who actually supplied the Foreign Workers Centralised Management System (FWCMS) to Malaysia many years ago. He is not involved in recruiting workers,” Free Malaysia Today quoted the minister.
Bestinet in April also denied any links to recruitment agencies listed on its FWCMS.
Labour recruitment agents in Bangladesh and Malaysia are opposed to Putrajaya’s decision to limit the number of agents allowed to send workers to Malaysia to 25 agents and 250 subagents, urging instead for an open market.
The National Association of Malaysian Employment Agencies (Papsma) said there are 14 source countries for blue-collar foreign workers, and none have limits on the number of labour agencies allowed to send workers.
Saravanan said he would not budge on this, arguing that an open market in the early 2000s had led to an uncontrolled influx of workers in Bangladesh, many of whom ended up jobless and living on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.
He did not address how these workers were allowed visas by the Immigration Department without a job waiting for them in Malaysia.
Long linked to foreign labour recruitment decision-makers
Mohd Amin, who has the title Datuk Seri, has long been linked to ministers in charge of foreign labour import, including one time home minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
In an interview with Suara.tv in 2016, Mohd Amin denied claims his Malaysian citizenship application was “fast-tracked” by Zahid, maintaining that he has lived in Malaysia since the 1990s, is married to a Malaysian and has Malaysian children.
In 2018, Nepali Times erroneously reported that he was Zahid’s brother-in-law in its report on the exploitation of Nepali labour brought into Malaysia.
Bestinet denied the Nepali Times report linking it to exploitation.
Mohd Amin was also linked to Zahid’s brother Abdul Hakim Hamidi, who at the time was also in the business of recruiting workers from Bangladesh.
In 2019, activists lodged a report to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, urging a probe into links between then Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaan and Bestinet after Kulasegaran cleared Bestinet of alleged wrongdoing in labour recruitment.
More recently, Mohd Amin has been linked to MIC leaders, including Saravanan, after photographs of Mohd Amin with these leaders were circulated online.
Before the FWCMS, Malaysiakini’s investigation in 2015 found Bestinet was linked to another system to manage the import of workers from Bangladesh, but it denied this.
The system was to be supplied to the government by a company called Synerflux, which Malaysiakini found to be associated with Bestinet through a trail of common employees and directors.
Synerflux’s system bore stark similarities to Bestinet’s FWCMS, which is the system in place today.
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