Recruitment and employment through outsourcing of labour legalizes trafficking in persons to Malaysia

 

The Home Ministry has announced that the government will now allow the re entry of Bangladeshi workers from August 2006.  However this recruitment can only be done by the approved 139 approved outsourcing firms.  The outsourcing firms will have to recruit through the umbrella body of recruiting agents, BAIRA, in Bangladesh.

Tenaganita is very concerned and disturbed over this form of recruitment and employment of workers. Outsourcing would mean that such firms will supply workers to a main company that requires the workers.  The main company has no responsibility to the workers. It will only deal with the outsourcing firm and make all payments to the outsourcing company. Outsourcing of labor therefore raises very serious concerns over labor rights protection and the enforcement of labor laws of the country.

This year alone Tenaganita received complaints from migrant workers involving 15 outsourcing firms.  Many of the workers were neither paid, nor have jobs after less than two months of being sent to a company to work.  10 outsourcing firms refused to send back workers at their request.  The workers had no work.  All these 10 firms demanded payment for the levy and work permit. They held the passports of the workers.  The workers were forced into all forms of work. One worker, under NN Secondary Process within a space of 3 months had to work in a furniture company, then in a plantation and a scrap metal company with no wages received.  Is this not bonded labor?

Another company, Bebaka used gangsters to beat up 42 workers, took all their monies when the workers began to ask for their wages. They held the passports of all the workers. After this incident, the workers out of sheer fear went back to work. It was a problem for the workers to make a police report as they did not have their passports.   KHR Plantation Resources took 33 days to take out detained workers recruited by them, from the KLIA depot.

The management of the workers by these companies added with their violent form of behavior is only a small reflection of the highly exploitative form of labor  management we will have with outsourcing as a strategy for recruitment and employment.

In the case of unpaid wages, or dismissal or no more work to do or accidents at workplace, it is unclear who will be held responsible?  Who will be made accountable for the rights violations of the workers.  Will it be  the main company who uses the labor or the outsourcing firm?  How will the term ‘employer’ be defined?

The work permit issued will hold the name of the outsourcing firm. Thus will the courts define the employer as the outsourcing firm who in real terms is not the employer?  But the employment act defines otherwise.  The worker remains in a dilemma.

Therefore the companies that use the labor will not be held accountable and escape compliance of respect of legal rights enshrined in the labor laws, the Employment Act, the Industrial Relations Act and the Trade Union Act.  Even in the case of health hazards and accidents at work, the actual employers can run away from responsibility.  Similarly, how will workers health be taken care of, especially when they are sick? 

Outsourcing labor creates a condition of a very deregulated and unprotected form of labor.  The government by developing such a policy without protective mechanisms and no respect for universal labor rights and standards, in short, institutionalizes bonded labor.

There is a lack of transparency on how these firms have been identified?  What is the track record and what criteria was used to approve them as outsourcing firms for labor.  Tenaganita, from the various cases we have handled, views these firms as arrogant, exploitative and who treat the workers like slaves, bonded and confined to the living centers provided by the outsourcing firms.  This form of behavior is condoned by the government as no action has been taken against such firms.  Their only interest is pure profit from trade in human persons. And in the absence of any clear defined protective mechanism, the state is a party to a new form of slave trade and trafficking in persons.

The government believes that it can easily monitor the companies as it can seize guarantee bonds or revoke their licenses. But what protection mechanism is in place for the workers?  What will happen to the workers who have paid thousands of ringgit with the assurance of a decent job for two years in the country but find that the system has failed? As has been the practice, the workers will be arrested, detained and then deported to their country of origin.  It will be a repeat of what happened in 1993-1995 when there was massive recruitment of Bangladeshi workers who were sold over and over to contractors, became undocumented and detained.  Many died in the camps as well.

This form of recruitment and employment of poverty ridden migrant workers, from countries like Bangladesh, for profit maximization and unprotected employment, is inhuman. It violates fundamental basic labor standards and rights.  It only places Malaysia as a destination country that institutionalizes and legalizes trafficking in persons.

Director