Approval For Labour Recruitment: Malaysia’s transparency questioned by Bangladesh

Bangladesh has questioned Malaysia's transparency in the approval process for recruiting Bangladeshi and other foreign workers as researchers and the media are increasingly exposing their exploitation and defrauding in the Southeast Asian country.

"Not a single worker is supposed to be jobless if the Malaysian government's foreign worker recruitment approval process is transparent," said Bangladesh High Commission in Malaysia in a statement on Saturday.

Based on preliminary surveys, researchers said there could be thousands of migrant workers, mainly Bangladeshis, facing precarious conditions without jobs for months after arriving in Malaysia.

Independent researcher Andy Hall, who is based in Nepal but has his researchers in Malaysia, said many bogus Malaysian companies in connivance with the Bangladeshi agents are hiring Bangladeshi workers for making money. Those companies don't have actual worksites and thus the workers are being left jobless.

"Our preliminary surveys found Bangladeshi workers' recruitment cost ranges from Tk 4 to Tk 5 lakh. When they are arriving here [Malaysia] and finding no jobs, it means they are getting irregular and debt-bonded," he told The Daily Star yesterday.

Hall said the previous records of labour recruitment from Bangladesh to Malaysia suggest presence of syndication linked to the powerful lobbies in both the countries. Now that Malaysia is increasingly recruiting workers from Bangladesh, several examples of defrauding and exploiting the workers suggest that its scale is quite high.

Malaysia freshly started recruitment from Bangladesh in August last year, four years after suspending in 2018 on the allegations of excessive recruitment fees, corruption and labour exploitation. A syndicate of 10 Bangladeshi agents was allowed to send workers then.

Last year, Malaysia initially allowed 25 Bangladeshi agents to recruit workers in Malaysia and then it was expanded to 100 agents.

According to Bangladesh High Commission in Malaysia, Malaysian labour department has approved recruitment of 3,58,892 Bangladeshi workers. Of them, 1,34,595 workers have already arrived there and arrival of 2.25 lakh more are in the process.

It said it got to learn from media reports and personal sources of the joblessness of foreign workers, including those of Bangladeshis, and has taken initiative to address the problems.

The high commission further said Malaysian authorities through diplomatic letter clarified that the Bangladesh mission in Malaysia should not inspect the project sites of companies that were applying for Bangladeshi workers, rather the inspection was under the purview of the labour department.

The statement claimed that the number of workers not getting jobs is small compared to the total number of those arriving there for jobs and workers of other countries also face the similar situation. The high commission is working to place the jobless workers under new employers.

"We are also closely working with the Malaysian government so that not a single Bangladeshi worker coming legally here faces harassment," the statement said.

Last week, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission arrested Human Resources Minister V Sivakumar's private secretary and another senior officer in connection with an investigation into the approval of migrant worker quotas.