High hopes as Malaysia to check exploitation of Bangladeshi workers

In an interesting turn of events, the Malaysian government is set to review bilateral agreements with Bangladesh and 14 other nations from which it sources labourers in a bid to address exploitative practices and manpower imbalances that have left thousands of migrant workers stranded without jobs.

Officials concerned revealed the development on Tuesday.

It comes as 751 Bangladesh migrant workers had previously filed cases with Malaysia’s labour department to claim unpaid wages.

Workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia and Nepal account for over 70% of Malaysia‍‍`s migrant labour, with the remainder coming from countries including India, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Thailand.

Since last year, thousands of migrants, mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal, have been left in limbo after arriving in Malaysia, where they were told that jobs promised to them in exchange for steep recruitment fees were no longer available.

The plight of the migrants coincided with concerns over workplace abuses in Malaysia, with several companies facing US bans over the use of forced labour in recent years. Many labourers said they had not been paid any wages.

Speaking to reporters late on Tuesday, the labour and home affairs ministers said the distribution of labourers was uneven across the economy, prompting a need to review the bilateral agreements.

They said Malaysia still had a shortage of workers in the agriculture and plantations sector, while quotas have been exceeded in other industries.
"We will revisit the agreements looking at various elements including fees, costs, contract conditions, health and so on," Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said, adding that the government would allow the transfer of worker quotas across sectors.

Human Resources Minister Steven Sim said authorities had completed investigations into five firms involved in hiring hundreds of workers who later found themselves without jobs.

He said employers who hired such workers must pay them wages even though they do not have jobs, adding that companies and individuals who violate the law will be barred from hiring migrant labourers.

Sim said, “751 Bangladesh migrant workers had filed cases in Malaysia to claim unpaid wages of around 2.2 million ringgit.”

Bangladeshi migrants keep flooding 

A Malaysian newspaper citing a Bangladeshi daily in September last year reported that more than 300,000 of 450,000 approved workers have come into Malaysia since the labour market re-opened in December 2021.

“We know that many of these workers end up in acute modern slavery situations in the country, due to debt bondage from exorbitant recruitment costs,” Andy Hall, migrant rights activist. 

He said the longstanding problem of Bangladeshi migrants brought in by syndicates not being offered jobs upon arrival here has not been fully resolved.

“While this has been caused by bogus Malaysian employers and agents, the Bangladeshi government is complicit in allowing these syndicates to continue to draw its citizens into a situation of abuse and debt bondage in Malaysia,” he said.

In October 2023, he wrote to the UN about the "dire" situation of hundreds of Bangladeshi expatriate workers allegedly struggling in debt bondage and are jobless in the Southeast Asian country.

Malaysia signed an agreement with Bangladesh on Dec 19, 2021, to reopen its labour market for migrant workers after imposing a ban for three-and-a-half years.