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No respite for workers

Middlemen out to make money as KL starts to regularise workers Aug 1

Porimol Palma
Undocumented Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia are falling prey to the same crooked manpower agents who are responsible for their misery over the years.
Out to cash in on the Malaysian government's amnesty plans for the irregular foreign workers, a section of outsourcing agents and middlemen are now fleecing the workers, prom-
ising them regularisation and jobs.
On June 22, Kuala Lumpur announced amnesty for the undocumented workers, allowing them to get regularised or go back home without facing any penalty. The registration will begin on August 1.
Around five lakh Bangladeshis are now working in Malaysia with an estimated three lakh of them without papers.
The amnesty announcement
came as a great relief, as it gave them hopes for regularisation after years of exploitation mainly by the outsourcing agents and brokers.
However, that sense of relief soon gave way to alarm and anxiety with the unscrupulous agents getting into play.
There are several hundred outsourcing agents in Malaysia who are authorised to recruit and manage
foreign workers. Legally, they get commissions from the principal employers for supplying and managing foreign workers.
However, in reality, they take commissions both from the employers and the workers and deprive the latter in various ways, researchers found.
These agents and their brokers are now conning the undocumented workers into relying on themforregularisa-tion.
Things have got even worse with many employers refusing to pay the regularisation fees for their foreign workers, which is mandatory forthem.
The government-fixed fees for regularisation range from Malaysian Ringgit (RM) 2,000 to 2,500 each (1 RM equivalent to Tk 24.60), but the agents and brokers are demanding as much as RM 3,000 to 4,000 each, said a number of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia contacted over the phone.
Al Masum, a Bangladeshi living in Malaysian city Klang, said, “As undocumented workers, we were not paid properly in the past. The agents through whom we got jobs used to deduct a big amount from our wages every month. Now, we have no savings to meet the expenses required to benefit from the amnesty."
Shafiqul Islam, another Bangladeshi in Malaysia, said, "Now that Kuala Lumpur has given us an opportunity, please tell our prime minister to ensure that we are no more exploited by the agents and brokers and the companies employ us directly."
Some other fellow workers echoed what Masum and Shafiqul said.
Prof CR Abrar, executive director of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, an NGO, suggests that the Bangladesh government discuss with the Malaysian authorities the issue of mandatory payment of regularisation fees by the employers.
"Bangladeshi migrants have immensely suffered in the hands of the outsourcing agents and brokers in Malaysia,” he told The Daily Star.
If the migrants get jobs through the outsourcing agents, they will be in trouble again. The government must realise it and act accordingly if it really wants to protect its citizens from further abuses, said Prof Abrar of Dhaka University.
Harun Al Rashid, coordinator of Kuala Lumpur-based regional migrants' rights body Caram Asia, told The Daily Star over the phone that Bangladesh should immediately ask its workers to get registered only through the employers to protect themselves from fraudulence and exploitation in future.
The Bangladesh high commission should hold
meetings with the Bangladeshi communities across Malaysia and educate them about the rules set by the government there for regularisation, he added.
The high commission can also place Bangla advertisements on Malaysian television channels and in local Bangla newspapers, he suggested.
On allegations that many employers are not willing to pay the fees they are obliged to pay as per the rules, he said only the Malaysian government can address the issue.