Save our migrants in Malaysia

Over the past month, The Daily Star has published multiple reports and editorials about Bangladeshi migrants who face unmet promises and exploitative employers in Malaysia. However, we are dismayed to learn that authorities in the destination country are actually taking action against workers and on behalf of corrupt employers. In a recent letter to the Malaysian attorney general, the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM) alleged that despite complaints to the police and the human resources department, filed by migrants and the PSM, no action has been taken against employers who confiscated workers' passports and failed to provide them with jobs and salaries. Instead, Malaysian police are now investigating employers' claims that the complaints filed by Bangladeshi workers are fake. There are also claims of employers having taken workers' signatures on blank papers, which the latter fear could be used against them. In such circumstances, the support extended to our migrants by the PSM is admirable.

Unfortunately, such blatant use of intimidation by Malaysian employers against Bangladeshi migrants has been a continuous thing, largely unconfronted by authorities in both countries. Then there's the dominance of corrupt syndicates in the recruiting process and the sky-high amounts workers must borrow to pay off recruiters. As we know from previous reports, researchers estimate that out of around 800,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers, between 100,000 and 200,000 remain jobless, unpaid, and in debt.

Bangladesh's connection with Malaysia, in terms of exporting its human resources there, has been a murky one for decades. But the trial-and-error process of making recruitment corruption-free has resulted in too many lives (of Bangladeshi workers) ruined and even lost altogether. We know a government-to-government process, bypassing private agencies, was adopted in 2012 to solve the crisis. But since that failed, why have we not seen our government hardening its approach of sending our workers to Malaysia? What of those workers who are now trapped in that country, their passports seized, and justice eluding them? This cannot be.

We urge the government to wake up and pay attention to the harrowing reality of the hundreds of migrants in Malaysia. Our authorities must compel their counterpart in the destination country to put an end to the exploitation and discrimination committed by the Malaysian employers. The dream of a stable livelihood in a foreign country cannot keep turning into a nightmare for the thousands of Bangladeshis in Malaysia.