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KL’s job-cut style a great injustice

50 civil society' groups of South, South-east Asia decry premature termination of foreign workers

Staff Correspondent
Fifty civil society groups from South and South-east Asia have said it would be a great injustice if Malaysian employers are allowed to prematurely terminate foreign workers' employment contracts and send them back home without adequate compensation.
In a joint statement, they said foreign workers are unlikely to obtain refund from the agents if their visas are cancelled, reported Inter-Press Service, a Rome-based news agency, from Malaysian city Penang yesterday.
The statement comes following Malaysia's cancellation of 55,000 work visas to Bangladeshis, and application of the principle that employers terminate foreign workers before the locals. Bangladeshi workers pay around Tk 2 lakh to go to Malaysia for jobs.
Malaysian labour department recorded that in January this year, 4,325 workers were retrenched -- 2,153 of them local and 2,172 foreigners. The retrenchment was made in the wake of a decline in economic growth and export.
Malaysia has reportedly slashed its work permit approvals by over 70 percent this year.
Meanwhile, 100 to 150 Bangladeshi workers are returning from Malaysia every day for joblessness. Yesterday. 110 workers returned home without any compensation.
Besides, at least 45 workers came back from Saudi Arabia and 18 from Dubai.
Most foreign workers in Malaysia are from Indonesia.
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Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Nepal and the Philippines-- usually on three-year contracts.
Around four lakh Bangladeshis left for Malaysia since August 2006, but thousands of them got stranded there and thousands returned home with-out getting compensation.
Early termination of their employment contracts means they would usually end up in a worse condition than when they had first entered into the contracts, the joint statement said.
"This is a great injustice, and it is inhumane... If there is going to be early termination of employment agreements, the workers must be paid adequate compensation," said the statement.
Paying migrant workers the usual termination benefits that Malaysian workers are entitled to -- calculated on the basis of number of years in service - would not be fair in view of the huge costs foreign workers incurred for coming to Malaysia.
Before they send back any workers, employers should pay what they owe them, says Ruth Paul, coordinator of Foreign Workers Service Centrein Penang.
"These workers don't have (statutory) retrenchment benefits. So, if they have a year remaining on their contracts, the employers could pay their outstanding wages (for the remaining period) plus the cost of flight tickets," Paul said.
Human rights lawyer Charles Hector suggests if a migrant worker is retrenched before contract period ends, a new amended work permit could be given to allow the worker to be employed in another sector needing workers.