Hiring foreign workers in Malaysia: Eight IT officials held for taking bribe
Eight top officials of an IT company that provides software to the Malaysian government were arrested Tuesday for accepting bribes to recruit workers, including Bangladeshis.
The arrests lend credence to longstanding allegations that corruption in the recruitment process leads to high recruitment costs.
The arrest of the Bestinet officials after months-long investigation by Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) will create a scope to clean up Malaysia's recruitment sector of huge anomalies that have been going on for years, said labour migration analysts.
According to Malaysian newspaper The Star, the MACC arrested CEO and seven other officials of Bestinet, which provides an online system -- Foreign Worker Centralized Management System (FWCMS) -- to the Malaysian government that is used to recruit foreign workers.
The CEO as well as other suspects, including a senior official in the firm were arrested when they were summoned to MACC on Tuesday night. However, only six were remanded, including the CEO, while two others were released on bail, according to the report.
The suspects were brought before Magistrate Irza Zulakha Rohanuddin on Wednesday who allowed a three-day remand order until August 5.
Malaysian daily The Star learnt that Bestinet had processed a total of 3,45,861 applications of foreign workers between May and July 29.
MACC director of investigations Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hashim confirmed the remand and that investigation was ongoing, according to the report published on Wednesday.
The FWCMS, which was used for recruiting Bangladeshi workers in 2016-18, was also in place when Bangladesh and Malaysia resumed the process of labour recruitment in early July under a new deal signed in December last year.
In September, 2018, Malaysia suspended hiring Bangladeshi workers on allegations of malpractices in the recruitment process and high recruitment costs.
After resumption, most recruiting agents and civil society groups in Malaysia and Bangladesh have been calling for stopping syndication of recruiting agents, saying it would drive upmigration cost, just as it had between 2016 and 2018 when each worker had to pay up to Tk 4 lakh, even though the two countries initially set the cost at only Tk 40,000.
According to The Star report, it learnt that the "payment" taken by Bestinet was RM800-RM1,500 [Tk 17,000-32,000] per approval ofrecruitment application.
Asked about the matter, Malaysia-based Anti-Human Trafficking Council Taskforce Member Abdul Aziz Ismail yesterday told this correspondent that the agents from Bangladesh, through their partners in Malaysia, make payments through hundi.
He said his research in the past found that agents in Malaysia bribe employers as well as Malaysian officials concerned for issuing job approvals. For example, if a company needs 10 foreign workers, 100 approvals will be secured for recruiting additional workers through underhand means, as agents can make more profits if they hire more workers.
In reality, if the additional workers are "hired" and go to Malaysia, they remain jobless, their work permits are therefore not renewed and so they become undocumented.
So, migrants suffer for the corruption of agents and certain government officials who do not check the companies' true need for workers before issuing job approvals, Abdul Aziz told this correspondent from Malaysia yesterday.
"The so-called IT company plays a big role in this process," he said.
Ali Haider Chowdhury, former secretary general of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), said the arrest of Bestinet officials prove the prior suspicion of massive corruption in recruitment processes.
"We want breaking of any syndicate and fair and transparent system of worker recruitment," he said.
Authorities in both countries need to work thoroughly and sincerely to make it happen, he added.
Meanwhile, in a statement to Malaysiakini, a news portal, Bestinet said it was confident that the company and its staff would be exonerated from any and all allegations.
"Bestinet upholds strict governance regarding business ethics and integrity and practises zero-tolerance policy towards bribery and corruption in all its forms," it said.
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