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Andy Hall said with about 5,000 workers coming from Dhaka over the last few days, he has received reports of many of them being whisked off to stay in temporary crowded shelters while the agents look for their employers who are officially named in the permits.
Over in Bangladesh, he said, there were reports of at least 10,000 to 30,000 workers with approved documents missing the deadline to reach Kuala Lumpur as a result of a lack of flights and a cyclone hitting Bangladesh a few days ago.
“The mess at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Terminals 1 and 2 over the last three days speaks for itself. Many are stuck with their employers missing.
“But the biggest problem the Malaysian authorities have to worry about is the Bangladeshi workers being cheated and landing (here in Malaysia) without jobs. There are reports in Dhaka of syndicates bringing them (into the country) after using dubious and corrupt means to get the permits,” he told FMT.
Hall said he also sighted a letter from a KLIA immigration officer saying the government has not extended the deadline, which means those arriving tomorrow will be deported as their permits will be considered as expired.
“They have also advised all airlines not to allow workers with work permits to board the flights from Dhaka tomorrow as they are considered expired documents. With this, an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 Bangladeshi workers will be in dire straits.
“Sources in Dhaka are saying these people have paid agents huge sums of borrowed money at extortionate interest rates to come to Malaysia for jobs. With this, their lives are going to be ruined and they will fall into situations of acute debt bondage and modern slavery,” he said.
Hall hopes the government will consider the plight of these stranded workers and give a one-off extension so that they will be able to come to Malaysia as planned and human trafficking-related investigations can be carried out on arrival.
He said support must be provided if abuse and extortion are revealed.
Yesterday, immigration director-general Ruslin Jusoh said the large number of foreign workers arriving at KLIA was due to employers rushing to bring them into the country before the deadline.
On March 1, the home ministry announced that unused quotas for foreign workers would be cancelled on June 1 as it wanted to free up quotas for the hiring of foreign workers – which was frozen in March last year – by cancelling allocations given that were not used up as of May 31.
Responding to a viral video on the large number of foreign workers at the terminals, Ruslin attributed this to employers bringing in foreign workers “at the last minute” to beat the deadline.
According to a report in The Daily Star in Bangladesh, 450,000 migrant workers have come to Malaysia from August 2022 to April this year. This is part of the 500,000 workers that Malaysia announced would be taken in to work here in various fields.
The deadline comes as international agencies such as the International Organization for Migration and the International Labour Organization recently expressed concern about the plight of Bangladeshis duped into coming to Malaysia for non-existent jobs.
In April, a group of UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts said they were dismayed at reports about Bangladeshi migrants who travelled to Malaysia after being promised employment, only to find out they had been duped.
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