Suhakam: Major flaw in Malaysia's efforts to fight labour trafficking

The government’s failure to prosecute employers and agents responsible for documented migrant workers being jobless in Malaysia, treating it as a trafficking offence, is reflective of a serious shortcoming in its law enforcement, said Suhakam commissioner Ragunath Kesavan.

“Agents and employers bringing in workers legally, but do not have jobs for them, withhold passports or abuse them, can be prosecuted as traffickers,” he said.

Lamenting the inadequacy of labour court action to recover exorbitant recruitment fees paid by scammed workers, Ragunath said the offence was not merely contractual and the government should not hesitate to prosecute all those who breach the law.

“What is the outcome of investigations into police reports lodged by workers?,” he asked, referring to the various police reports lodged across Malaysia, last year and this year.

“The home minister committed to applying the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007 to prosecute the perpetrators, yet we are only hearing about employers being blacklisted,” he said.

Extent of workers’ redress

Last November, Malaysiakini’s investigations found that through an alleged syndicate of six companies, hundreds upon hundreds of workers were recruited under quotas obtained using fake documents and loopholes in the system.

Mounting police reports lodged against an unnamed mastermind last year implicated in quota fraud prompted the Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) to focus its investigation on the individual's deceptive migrant recruitment activities.

The workers housed in dormitories in Nilai, remained jobless for months, caught in uncertainty, while the owners of the companies implicated in a scheme were not under investigation.

CCID director Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf Ramli confirmed the identity of the reported mastermind, but Malaysiakini is withholding his name pending formal charges against him.

Workers from two of these companies implicated in the quota fraud had also filed police reports at the Nilai police headquarters against their employers, alleging having been cheated into coming to Malaysia to take up ready jobs.

However, the workers stranded in Nilai escaped the fate that befell 171 Bangladeshi workers in Pengerang caught in a similar dilemma of prolonged unemployment, whose attempt to make a police report got them arrested instead.

After their release by the Immigration Department, 571 Bangladeshi workers only managed to file claims for their unpaid wages with the Labour Department.

Bangladesh MP: Over 1,000 undocumented citizens in M'sian prisons

Saifuddin: We'll get feedback before setting migrant worker deals

Employers can't deduct salaries as punishment – minister

MP SPEAKS | Let’s do better for migrants, asylum seekers