Migrants Not Poor You Re Joking Senior Cop Told

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North-South Initiative executive director Adrian Pereira says many migrant workers have to take loans or even sell their family properties to pay off agents, traffickers and smugglers.PETALING JAYA: Rights activists have shot down a senior police officer’s statement that illegal immigrants cannot be described as poor since they can afford to pay syndicates to smuggle them into the country.
North-South Initiative executive director Adrian Pereira and Tenaganita executive director Glorene Das said many migrant workers, documented and undocumented, were victims of debt bondage.
“They have to take loans or even sell their family properties to pay off agents, traffickers and smugglers,” Pereira said.
“Migrants who take loans can’t take the risk of changing or losing their jobs even when working conditions are bad as they have yet to settle their loans.”
Adrian Pereira.He said there were many intermediaries gaining from the large amounts of money involved at the expense of the migrants.
Last week, Hazani Ghazali, the director of internal security and public order at Bukit Aman, said the typical illegal immigrant would pay a syndicate RM1,300 to smuggle him into the country.
“To come to Malaysia, they have to bring thousands of ringgit,” he said. “That means they have the money.”
Pereira told FMT the figure given by Hazani was too low. He said the money paid by migrants ranged from RM2,000 to as high as RM20,000.
He said the law must be amended to treat immigration violations as administrative offences rather than crimes punishable by imprisonment or corporal punishment.
Das said many migrants were deceived and extorted by unregulated recruitment agencies.
Glorene Das.“Workers fall into debt bondage and have very little choice but to stay on in the country to repay the large sums of money they have borrowed at high interest rates,” she told FMT.
She cited the example of Indonesian domestic workers who would work without pay for years to settle their dues with “unscrupulous” recruiting agents.
She said it was easy for even documented foreign workers to lose their legal status in Malaysia.
“Migrant workers often become undocumented when they escape from exploitative working conditions or because of weaknesses in the migrant labour management system,” she said.
Das said these weaknesses had resulted in the failure of employers to renew work permits, enabled unethical practices by agents and facilitated illegal recruitment through the corruption of enforcement officers.
“The enforcement agencies do not take into account these reasons for the undocumented status, but blame and victimise undocumented migrant workers,” she said. “Instead of being protected, the workers are criminalised for not possessing documents.” - FMT

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