LABOUR-MALAYSIA: In Just a Year, Triumph Turns into Despair

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia, Aug 26 2004 (IPS) - In just over a year, the triumph that 79 migrant workers from India celebrated after winning a landmark case against an abusive Malaysian employer has turned into despair.

This is because their case over deception and underpayment of salaries remains in limbo. The defeated employers have appealed the Supreme Court decision handed down in June but 13 months later, the Court of Appeal has not yet fixed a date to hear the case.

Worse, the workers have lost their jobs and sources of income and now face the risk of deportation, which means they would not be able to see their legal campaign through.

This test case illustrates how difficult it is for aggrieved migrant workers to seek legal redress against their employers.

While waiting for a final resolution, they now live on handouts from well-wishers. Their status has become ‘undocumented’, making them targets for possible detention and deportation or court penalties, including whipping.

‘‘We had a lot of dreams before we arrived in Malaysia,” 28-year-old Sambasiva Rao says ruefully in a shabby-looking double-storey terrace house in mainland Penang, an abode originally shared by 16 workers. ‘‘We wanted to earn some money for two years after repaying our loans in the first year.”

Most of the workers raised some 100,000 Indian rupees (2,160 dollars) to finance their trip to Malaysia and to pay agents’ charges. They mortgaged or sold off family properties and pawned or pledged family jewellery.

‘‘We even had to borrow from ‘blades’ (as cut-throat money lenders in India are widely referred to) who charge 5 to 10 percent interest per month,” he lamented.

Sambasiva was a telephone and television repair technician before coming to Malaysia. ‘‘In my case, I wanted to go back to India and start a small business, perhaps an electrical shop, and settle down.”

The workers – only 32 remain out of the batch of 91 workers who first arrived in Malaysia in 2002 û claimed they had been duped into coming to Malaysia to work for a basic salary of 750 ringgit (197 U.S. dollars).

For official purposes, an employment contract signed by the employer before an Indian High Commission official in Kuala Lumpur stipulated the workers’ basic salary as 600 ringgit (158 dollars). But it was never signed by the workers before the Protector of Emigrants in India prior to their departure from India as required. In fact, the workers say they were unaware of the existence of this contract.

The workers received a basic salary of only 350 ringgit (92 dollars) when they first received their wages. They were then asked to sign fresh contracts with these new terms and when they refused, they were not allowed to work. They then instructed lawyers to file an action in court.

In October 2002, 79 of the workers filed a suit in the High Court that eventually led to victory. – It is indeed a sad case,” the judge reportedly commented at the time as he awarded compensation in favour of the workers.

‘‘This whole episode is a conspiracy by the defendant (labour recruitment agents in Malaysia and India) to cheat innocent workers who had mortgaged their land, pledged or sold their jewellery and had signed promissory notes so that they could earn a fair and reasonable sum from their employment,” he observed. ‘‘Instead they had been cheated, degraded, denied food and basic amenities."

By the time the decision was awarded, only 52 workers were still left in Malaysia. Since then, 20 more have gone home mostly because they were unable to endure the harassment and difficulties here.

Of the 32 workers still in Malaysia, 22 were terminated on various grounds, leaving only 10 workers in employment. Upon termination, flight tickets back to India are usually booked immediately and workers are asked to vacate their overcrowded living quarters.

The permits of the 10 workers still with jobs have started expiring from Aug. 22 this year. According to activists assisting the workers, the firm has not expressed any intention to renew their work permits. Thus, the workers have effectively been rendered undocumented after the end of their contracts, making them subject to possible arrest, detention and deportation.

Activists and their legal advisors say the presence of the workers in Malaysia is crucial so that they can give evidence during a hearing of assessment in the High Court of Penang should the Court of Appeal dismiss the company’s appeal.

Joachim Xavier, the migrants’ desk case officer with the Penang Office for Human Development, says he has written two letters to the Human Resources Minister Fong Chan Onn seeking a face-to-face meeting to resolve the problem û but to no avail. ‘‘Therefore, we are turning up at his doors and asking to see him,” he told IPS.

More than two million foreign workers are in the country, making up 30 percent of the workforce. The government is trying to reduce the country’s dependence on migrant workers and yet another massive sweep against undocumented workers is expected in a few months.

The immigration department usually awards short-term renewable special passes to workers who are seeking redress from their employers, but in this case, even these have expired.

Xavier says he cannot understand how Malaysia’s justice system can require the workers to be present for the court hearing, while immigration policies at the same time deny them the opportunity to fulfill that obligation.

Said Xavier: ‘‘When such systemic contradictions deny the workers the right to stay and seek justice, then that system is guilty of denying the workers their basic human rights to a fair and just trial in a court of law.” (END/IPS/AP/HD/LB/PR/AN/JS/04)