bangkit.net

The Ministry of Home Affairs, in particular the Immigration department should not mislead nor pretend over the recent chaos and fiasco in the recruitment and employment of foreign workers. The Home Ministry, we understand, has approved the recruitment of 300,000 workers from Bangladesh alone.

It is the Ministry of Home Affairs that decided the outsourcing strategy of recruitment and employment for workers from Bangladesh when the government revoked the ban imposed in 1996. Within a year over 200 outsourcing companies were approved. And it approves applications for recruitment and employment by these companies within 24 hours. Why the haste to recruit thousands through such a process? Who is making the money from this recruitment process? The workers claim that they have paid over RM12,000 or Taka 200,000 to obtain the work and the calling visa to come to Malaysia.

The outsourcing companies are able to violate all laws of the country because the Ministry of Home Affairs has no monitoring mechanism and lacks capacity to deal with the recalcitrant behaviour of both the outsourcing companies and their agents.

If there are no jobs available, why was approval given to these companies within 24 hours? How are applications for recruitment of over 1000 workers given to outsourcing companies without a proper process of verification?

Both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Outsourcing companies must be held accountable for the total mismanagement, abuse and various forms of human rights violations committed against the workers. The workers have been cheated. Their passports have been taken away by representatives of the companies and held in control by their agents.

The Immigration department has violated both the Immigration Act and basic human rights when it has sent hundreds of workers with legal documents and valid calling visa to the Depot at KLIA or to other detention centers. This form of arrest must stop. The workers have come to the country legally and with calling visas issued by the Malaysian High Commission in Dhaka.

The visas were issued only after the approval was given by the Ministry of Home Affairs and after the contracts were attested by the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur. Thus the workers cannot be treated as “illegals”.

The just action is to make the outsourcing companies or other companies accountable. The Malaysian companies have not kept up to their promises of employment. But on the other hand have collected large sums of money from the poor workers.

Therefore it is wrong of Dato’ Ishak Bin Hj Mohamed, Director of Enforcement of Immigration to assume the workers came to the country with a visa and then they intend to look for employment. The mess is created by the Home Ministry itself. It is wrong to blame the workers and then send them into detention.

Tenaganita will discuss with the Bar Council to see how we can file cases of unlawful arrest by the Immigration department over the continued arrest of migrant workers who had come into the country with proper visas and have legal status in the country.

There has to be greater transparency and accountability by the current government in the management of migration in Malaysia. Y.B. Dato’Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, as Minister of Home Affairs must ensure transparency in the recruitment and employment of the workers. The Home Ministry should put up in it website the names of all companies where approval has been given for the recruitment of the workers. And together with the names of the companies, exhibit the applications with evidence of documents of employment and jobs.

We call on Y.B. Dato Seri Mohammed Najib Bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak as Head of the Cabinet committee to stop the abuse and fraud in the recruitment and employment of foreign labor and take steps to disband outsourcing as a strategy for employment. There must be a total review with the aim of instituting a comprehensive policy o foreign labor.

Dr. Irene Fernandez
Director