Rampant labour trafficking that left tens of thousands of Bangladeshis stranded without jobs in Malaysia must be addressed first before signing any deal to end a year-long freeze on entry for a fresh cohort of migrant workers, activist groups have warned.
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Bangladesh, one of Asia’s poorest nations, sent as many as 450,000 people to work in the Southeast Asian country between 2021 and 2023, according to labour authorities in Dhaka, most staffing low-paid jobs on building sites, farms and restaurants.
But Malaysia imposed a freeze on new migrant hiring on May 31 last year, after a labour scam was uncovered, revealing Bangladeshi workers had been duped into paying up to US$5,000 to syndicates operating in both countries for jobs that did not exist.
That left many stranded in Malaysia, forced to overstay illegally, deep in debt and easy targets for exploitation in the country’s notorious black market for labour.
The labour scandal was so serious that UN experts stepped in to urge prosecution of the syndicates and “certain high-level officials” in both governments, who had allowed the scam to unfold, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.
Bangladeshi officials were due to meet with Malaysia’s Interior Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail and Human Resources Minister Steven Sim in Malaysia’s administrative capital of Putrajaya on Thursday in an effort to reopen the job market, according to a Bloomberg report.