ALTHOUGH the number of migrant workers in Sarawak is far from significant, they pose a national problem for us because of their massive presence in West Malaysia.
Official figures and unofficial estimates on the number of migrant workers differ greatly, partly because it is so hard to pin down the number of illegal foreign workers. Besides, even legal foreign workers can become illegal aliens overnight, once their work permit expires, and they choose to stay on in Malaysia.
One estimate puts the total number of both legal and illegal migrant workers at 5 million. If that estimate is anything approaching the true figure, then we have a real problem on our hand. That would mean that one in five persons in Malaysia is a foreigner, working here legally or illegally.
The last time when I was in Kuala Lumpur recently, I could see these foreign faces everywhere. In the famous China Town at Petaling Street, almost all the vendors were from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Indonesia, or Thailand. All of them can speak Cantonese fluently. The China Town is a misnomer. It has turned into a Migrant Town!
No wonder the famous hawker food in Kuala Lumpur has seen such a severe drop of quality. All the cooks at the Chinese stalls are foreign workers!
My friends in KL tell me that migrant workers constitute our main work force in construction, food and beverage, manufacturing, and plantation industries. If they all leave tomorrow, our national economy will collapse. If that is not a national problem threatening our economic security, I do not know what is!
I was told that the average monthly income for any foreign worker doing menial work is RM800. In Cheras, I met a Myanmar waiter in a Chinese coffee shop making RM1,300 a month. Many of them enjoy free accommodation and food provided by their employers. In sharp contrast, a waiter in Kuching would be lucky to earn more than RM400 monthly.
That is probably the reason why these foreign workers would not come to our shores I guess. Ironically, the social-economic backwardness in Sarawak has become a blessing for us; at least we are spared the many social and security problems associated with foreign workers!
In a sense, Malaysia is a victim of her success. Our hefty economic growth in the past few decades has attracted these foreigners from countries beset with poverty and bad politics. It is also a measure of our success if our Malaysian youths can afford to consider these rough and tumble jobs as beneath their dignity to fill, leaving them for the picking by foreigners instead.
But this state of affair is also a result of deliberate policies in economic and manpower planning by the government at the highest level.
After all, Malaysia has an open economy heavily dependent on manufacturing and export. We are also competing with many newly emergent economies in the Asian region. The import of cheap foreign labour has been seen as a factor in keeping our costs down, and so maintaining our competitiveness on the international market.
The downside of this labour policy is that Malaysian workers have suffered from depressed wages. For a long time now, labour unions and concerned politicians have advocated the establishment of a minimum wage in Malaysia, and proposals have varied from RM1,500 to RM1,900 a month. But as long as our international competitiveness is hinged on cheap foreign labour, the call for a minimum wage is unlikely to be entertained.
In short, our macro-economic well-being is built upon the suffering of the Malaysian working class. That is really monstrously unfair to them.
With such a large number of foreigners in the country, there are bound to be those Malaysians who tend towards xenophobia. With crime rates on the rise, accusing fingers tend to point to the foreign workers as a threat to public security.
This misconception has been dispelled by the police long ago. According to their statistics, crimes committed by foreigners make up for less than 3 per cent of the total number of crimes in the country every year.
In reality however, these alien workers are more likely to be victims rather than criminals.
Even before they set foot on Malaysian soil, they have to pay a huge sum of money to some unscrupulous employment agents in their own country. Often they have to borrow heavily for this purpose, with the expectation that they can make a fortune in Malaysia.
Once in Malaysia, they discover to their great surprise that the same exploitation continues at their place of work. The employment agent or the employer will detain their travel document as a means of tying them down, even though it is against the law in Malaysia to keep anybody's passport. Then, employers often deduct a huge sum of money from their wages on the excuse of having to pay for their work permit to the Labour Ministry.
Most of these foreign workers are poorly educated; they do not know their rights in Malaysia, and would seldom report to their embassy with regard to abuses inflicted on them at work. In recent years, there have been increasing press reports of abuse of foreign workers, especially house maids.
In a press release published on May 16, 2005, Human Rights Watch Malaysia made the following observations:
"Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia typically work gruelling 16 to 18 hour days, seven days a week, and earn less than US$5 a day. Many employers hold their domestic worker's salary until the end of the standard two-year contract. In Malaysia, most domestic workers are forbidden to leave their workplace and many suffer psychological, physical, and sexual assault by labour agents and employers. Non-governmental organisations and the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur have received thousands of complaints from maids about working conditions, wages or abuse in the past few years.
"Human Rights Watch also criticised the immigration crackdown that Malaysia began March 1. Malaysian authorities and 300,000 civilian volunteers have arrested thousands of undocumented migrants and prosecuted them under the country's harsh immigration laws. Those found guilty may be caned, imprisoned for five years, fined up to 10,000 Malaysian Ringgit (around US$2,600), and detained indefinitely pending deportation."
The 'volunteers' mentioned by Human Rights watch above are members of the citizen group RELA, which was formed originally during the national emergency to serve as eyes and ears of their government. Recently, there have been many negative reports of Rela members abusing these foreign workers during raids, robbing them of cash and hand phones, and even extorting money.
Still, there are compassionate Malaysians who try to help these downtrodden alien workers. The foremost migrant worker activist has to be Irene Fernandez, Director of the NGO Tenaganita.
In 1995, she exposed the inhuman conditions foreign workers had to endure in detention camps run by the Immigration Department in a memorandum entitled Abuse, torture, and dehumanised conditions of foreign workers in detention centres.
For her good work, she was charged in the Kuala Lumpur Magistrates' Court for "publishing false news", and was convicted and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment in 2003. She appealed, and after her 13-year ordeal, her conviction was finally overturned by the High Court on November 24, 2008.
Justice has been served, but it saddens me that good citizens like Irene Fernandez have to suffer so much hardship for trying to improve Malaysia. She should have been be made a Datuk!
Indeed, how we treat our guest workers reflects on what kind of people we are. These workers have been driven by poverty and desperation to work for Malaysian employees. Just because they are foreign does not make them any less human than us. Our progress in economic development is due in large part to their blood, sweat, and tears.
So, if you happen to have some foreign workers in your employ, treat them courteously and pay them decent wages. We are all God's creatures, and no one should exploit another person for unfair profit.
