The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) today criticised as unfair the country's inclusion on a US list of the worst human trafficking offenders but expressed concerns over the issue.

Suhakam was "very concerned" over Washington's "Tier 3" blacklisting alongside offenders such as Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Sudan, commissioner N. Siva Subramaniam said.

"I agree a lot more has to be done ... but placing Malaysia in Tier 3 is not a very fair thing for the United States to do. They should look at our progress," he told AFP .

Key United States trading partner Malaysia, along with six other nations including Middle East allies Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, appeared Tuesday on the list in the US State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report."

Malaysia was cited for "failure to show satisfactory progress" in areas such as punishing acts of trafficking, providing adequate shelters and social services to victims and protecting migrant workers from involuntary servitude, the report said.

"The Malaysian government needs to demonstrate stronger political will to tackle ... significant forced labor and sex trafficking problems," it said.

Inadequate policing

Malaysia was not just a destination country but also a source and transit country, the report said.

Victims of sex trafficking in Malaysia, mainly women and girls, are from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Burma and China.

Subramaniam said Suhakam had repeatedly highlighted concerns over human trafficking and the treatment of migrant workers to the government.

He also said Suhakam was effectively unable to act on the issue, since the government body had no enforcement powers.

And while Malaysia already had some laws in place to deal with trafficking crimes, Subramaniam said inadequate policing was an issue in tackling the problem.

"It's a question of enforcing the law and creating more enforcement officers," he said.

Malaysian ministers acknowledged earlier in the year that human trafficking had become a worrying problem and that the country could become a hotspot for the crime.