Twenty-five returnee workers, cheated and abused in Malaysia, yesterday said they would begin a hunger strike unless their recruiting agent Kabir Enterprise pays them compensation within the next three days.
The workers in a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity auditorium urged the government to take steps to make Kabir Enterprise pay compensation to 100 jobseekers who they had sent to Malaysia on March 28, 2007 promising jobs in the country.
"We sold our properties, borrowed money from others and went to Malaysia with a hope to improve our living standard, but we are in a miserable state today. On top of it all, we had to undergo physical and mental torture. We want punishment to the people responsible for our plight," said Nazmul Hossain Khan, one of the workers.
"We want back all the money from Kabir Enterprise - - the money we spent for going to Malaysia and the money we paid for returning home,"headded.
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The 100 workers were sent in the country by Kabir Enterprise to work for a company named IH Technologies-ESCO-Carlsberg Beer, but they were not provided any job for a month, alleged the returnees adding that the company existed only on paper.
Nazrul, a representative of Kabir Enterprise in Malaysia, later handed them over to Sijati Pati, a Malaysian agent, which employed them at Flexotonics Technology, said Minhaz Ahmad, one of the returnee workers
The workers were underpaid and the company did not issue work visas for them to legally work in Malaysia. Moreover, the employer subjected the workers to physical abuse fre quently, he added saying, "Five to six workers were even forced to leave the company. They returned to Bangladesh failing to endure the torture."
”We could not take legal action as we did not have any legal document that the employer was supposed to arrange for us," Minhaz said.
The workers informed Kabir Enterprise of the abuses over email, but to no avail, he said.
On November 5,76 out of the 100 workers gathered on the Bangladesh High Commission premises and requested the government to help them repatriate, but the high commission officials did not pay heed to their request, he alleged.
Pressed by two officials of the Bangladesh High Commission, 60 of the workers went to join their workplace without any employment contract, he said. On November 17, hired goons of Kabir Enterprise beat up the workers and five of them were admitted to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur with serious injuries, Minhaz added.
"A police report was filed, but the police failed to catch Dulal, one of the goons hired by Kabir Enterprise. Though they lost faith in the high commission, they appealed it to send them home," he said.
However, the high commission officials forced the workers rejoin their workplaces. It also gave them their passports after making them sign an undertaking, which mentioned that the workers had received their passports from Kabir Enterprise representative Mamun and the agency would have no responsibility towards the workers from then on.
Most of the protesting workers, having spent all their money, accepted tneir passports and left the high commission as illegal workers that night, Minhaz said. "We do not know where they are now."
"The 25 of us managed to come home on our own, with the money our relatives had sent from Bangladesh. We ask the government
why it did not take any initiative to bring us home and is Kabir Enterprise really that powerful that the government can't do anything about them?" Muihazsaid.
On December 6, the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment in a letter asked Kabir Enterprise to bring back the 76 work ers from Malaysia, but the agency did not comply with the government directive.
Meanwhile, the government suspended all activities of Kabir Enterprise for its failure to ensure jobs and security to the workers
GM Rabbani Nayan, president of National Youth Forum of Bangladesh, and Harun-AJ-Rashid, program officer of Tenaganita, a migrants rights organisation in Malaysia, were also present at the press conference.