Hiring of Foreign Workers: Malaysia wants to revert to G2G
Looks to scrap existing G2G
Plus system to eliminate middlemen, check graft
In a major policy shift, the
new Malaysian government wants to reintroduce G2G, a state-level labour
recruitment system, to eliminate middlemen in the recruitment that has always
been marred by corruption and exploitation.
“We don't want G2G Plus. Any
arrangement should be government-to-government [G2G],” Malaysian Human
Resources Minister M Kulasegaran said on Sunday, reports Malaysian daily The
Star.
“There's no reason why we
cannot employ direct from the source countries,” he told reporters at a
programme in Ipoh, capital of the Malaysian state of Perak. If the middlemen
were removed, there would be less chance of corruption, he observed.
He said people who come to
Malaysia as guest workers are not slaves and they should be treated with respect.
“There was no headache during
G2G then -- and we want to go back to that.”
His remarks came following a
huge controversy over G2G Plus, a labour recruitment mechanism under which 1.64
lakh Bangladeshi workers migrated to Malaysia since 2016.
The Star on June 22 reported
that an “organised trafficking syndicate”, led by a Bangladeshi businessman
with alleged political connections with the Malaysian home ministry, raked in
at least two billion Malaysian ringgits from Bangladeshi workers in just two
years.
The workers paid RM20,000
(around Tk 4 lakh) each to their Bangladeshi agents, who then paid half of the
sum to the syndicate to have work permit approvals and flight tickets to
Malaysia, said the report.
The scam in Bangladeshi
labour recruitment is not new. Thousands of Bangladeshi workers had to return
home from the Southeast Asian country in 2009 after it put a freeze on hiring
workers following widespread media reports of labour exploitation.
Additional workers were
recruited for many name-only Malaysian companies during 2006-09 when private
recruiting agents sent works to Malaysia. Workers were charged over Tk 2 lakh
each though the government had fixed the migration cost at Tk 84,000 each.
After about four years of
freeze, Bangladesh and Malaysia in 2012 signed a G2G deal to reduce migration
costs and corruption, but only 10,000 workers could secure jobs in Malaysia
under the agreement, thanks to alleged conspiracies of the recruiting agents
and brokers.
Under the deal, workers could
only have jobs in Malaysia's plantation sector, which raised questions about
the sincerity of the authorities.
Following the Andaman boat
crisis in 2015, which revealed how Rohingyas and Bangladeshis were taking the
sea route to Malaysia, the Malaysian government and recruiting agents started
saying that the G2G system was not working.
Amid pressure from private
recruiting agents, Bangladesh and Malaysia signed the G2G Plus agreement in
2016, but migration experts expressed concern that it would drive up the
migration costs.
The scandal involving the G2G
Plus surfaced after the political changeover in Malaysia in May this year when
the government launched a campaign against the corruption of the previous
government's ministers.
According to The Star report,
only 10 out of over 1,000 Bangladeshi recruiting agents got the right to hire
workers under the G2G Plus arrangement.
Malaysian Minister
Kulasegaran announced suspending the G2G Plus, launching a full investigation
into the matter and reviewing the recruitment system with Bangladesh and other
countries.
He talked of the policy shift
on foreign worker recruitment on Sunday, only days after Nepal barred its
workers from going to Malaysia, alleging monopoly by a Malaysian company in
recruiting Nepalese workers and charging them higher fees.
The Nepali Times on July 20
reported that a deeply-rooted nexus of politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats
in Nepal and Malaysia looted more than Rs 5 billion over the past five years
from vulnerable Nepali migrant workers.
Migration
expert Anisur Rahman Khan called the new Malaysian government's realisation
about the labour recruitment a very welcome development.
“Over the
years we have seen how the involvement of private recruiting agents and illegal
middlemen resulted in huge corruption and labour exploitation,” he told The
Daily Star.
Efficient
handling of the G2G in cooperation with Bangladesh could bring discipline to
the sector, said Anisur, director of migration programme at Awaj Foundation, a
labour rights body.
He,
however, said the lead should come from Malaysia as South Korea did in 2004
when it introduced a state-run mechanism of recruiting foreign workers. It
significantly lowered migration costs and improved migrant labour conditions in
South Korea.
He demanded
Malaysia follow the path of South Korea.
An estimated one million
Bangladeshi workers are now working in Malaysia, said Bangladesh High
Commission officials in Kuala Lumpur.
Anisur Rahman Khan
Director, Migration
Awaj Foundation
House # 5/F (3rd Floor) Rasulbagh
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