Thousands of stranded workers in Malaysia may be deported

FE Team | Published: October 03, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Naim-Ul-Kairm
Thousands of Bangladeshi workers stranded at the transit camps in Kuala Lumpur might be deported because of new recruitment rules introduced by the Malaysian government, sources said.
According to the new rules, they said, the Malaysian employers will have to receive the Bangladeshi workers hired by them from the airport within 24 hours of their arrival.
If the employers, as per new rules, fail to do so, the workers will be shifted to transit camps for 72 hours.
In the event of no response from the employers during the additional period, the Malaysian immigration authorities will deport them, sources added.
Because of the new rules that came into effect last week, sources said, several thousand Bangladeshi workers now stranded, are on the verge of being deported unless the government intervened.
"It will be really very sad if the workers have to return home. There will be hardly any possibility for poor overseas job seekers to return to Malaysia again," a source said.
Quoting a Malaysian employer, its local agent said due to information distortion the company could not receive the workers in Kuala Lumpur on time.
"The workers were already deported by the time we sent the rectified information to the employer in Malaysian," he further said.
Some 0.5 million Bangladeshi workers have so far travelled to Malaysia with job since 1978. Out of them, they added, some 170, 000 manpower have left the country in the first nine month of the current year.
Exaggeration of some media reports narrating workers' misery has mainly caused imposition of such tough rules by the Malaysian government as it was hampering the image of the host country, a job seeker said.
"How can we hope that the employers will receive us immediately upon arrival in Kuala Lumpur when we need to wait for a month just to get a plane ticket in Dhaka," he said lamenting.
When contacted, the government official sources said the government may take a fresh move to request the Malaysia government to ease the newly introduced rules.