I spent three weeks of my summer break interning in Jakarta. An integral part of my time working there was also spent exploring Jakarta – going out and about to visit all sorts of places, to interact with the people – and to document my experiences. Armed with basic Bahasa Melayu (that has consequentially gone rather rusty thanks to extended periods of disuse) and a camera, I forced myself to step out of my comfort zone to discover what Jakarta had in store for me.
Being put in an alien environment was nerve-wracking initially, especially since it was my first visit to the busy mad metropolis of Jakarta. Indonesia was at once both familiar and foreign, and made me feel vulnerable and homesick. Luckily for me, I had good-natured local colleagues who patiently tackled the language and cultural barrier between us to show me Jakarta as they knew it to be.
With their guidance, I gradually became more accustomed to the city. I rode the local buses (and occasionally got lost) and bajaj and ojek. I went out of my way to speak to locals from all walks of life, and was especially struck by my interactions with immigrants from East Timor. I was initially hesitant to begin a conversation with them, given my own pre-existing prejudices (it didn’t help that I was wandering around the neighbourhood alone at night) about migrant workers. When I finally worked up the guts to approach them, I found them to be amiable folk, eager to share their stories of the secession of East Timor and of their lives in Jakarta with a curious Malaysian.
Another aspect of my work in Jakarta involved monitoring the news, picking out anything that might be of interest for either the company or for its clients. An issue that caught my interest was migrant workers in Malaysia, in lieu of the 6P amnesty exercise that the government is currently carrying out.
Based on the Malaysia Economic Monitor of November 2010, about 1.8 million foreign workers are legally employed in Malaysia. They are mostly concentrated in the low-skill sectors and come from a number of different countries, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. According to Associate Professor Dr Evelyn Devadason of Universiti Malaya, Malaysia’s population of legal migrant workers constitutes approximately 21% of the nation’s workforce and makes us the largest importer of labour in Asia. In the on-going 6P programme, 2.21 million migrant workers have been registered so far, from which 1.21 million are illegal immigrants.
Whether we like it or not, these migrant workers evidently contribute significantly to Malaysia’s economy, which consists largely of labour-intensive industries. They pay a substantial sum of money to an agent in order to come to our nation, possibly a large chunk of their savings or borrowed from loan sharks back home. They come to Malaysia looking for means to earn an honest living, enticed by the promise of a better salary which they in turn will most likely send back home to their families to help support them.
Unlike my sheltered personal experience of Jakarta, there are no friendly guides to show them the ropes and ease them into the system. Like any person entering a foreign land (and most likely for the first time), they feel some sense of fear – they have so much to lose and so much at stake. Many do not speak or read or write the local language.
They are at the mercy of recruitment agencies, many of which exploit these migrant workers in a multitude of ways: by charging migrant workers high rates for them to enter the country to work, giving them cheap visitor visas instead of proper working visas (which consequentially result in migrant workers becoming illegal immigrants), taking their passports without their consent, giving migrant workers lower wages than originally promised, forcing them to work inhumanely long hours. Effectively, these migrant workers become victims of human trafficking.
Their rights as workers, including rest days and worker benefits, are easily overlooked due to lack of enforcement of the relevant labour laws and bureaucratic neglect. The class of migrant workers that most middle and upper class Malaysian households are familiar with and cannot seem to live without – namely, foreign domestic help – are not even recognized under the Provision of Employment Act.
More often than not, we talk about migrant workers and their implications with an air of disdain and distrust. We blame them for allegedly taking away jobs from locals because they seem willing to work for less and for longer hours. We also tend to stereotype them as criminals, and perhaps unfairly so. The Malaysian Bar Council and Fair Labour Association both estimated that only 2% of crimes are committed by foreigners, yet they make up 30% of the prison population in Malaysia. But given how many migrant workers are paid so little, one can rationally deduce why they would perhaps be driven to steal. Given the cruel circumstances and treatment to which some migrant workers are subjected to, one can imagine why they would want to escape and run away.
Such crimes are by no means justified. But if put in their shoes, wouldn’t you be tempted to do the same?
Admittedly, I have been guilty of such preconceptions in the past. What my experience in Jakarta has taught me is the importance of conversation and communication with anyone and everyone, regardless of who they are. Casting aside the arbitrary differences in citizenship, migrant workers are no different from us, and deserve to be treated with the basic degree of respect to which every person is entitled to.
I sincerely hope that the 6P programme will yield positive outcomes for the many migrant workers who have registered themselves. However, though a great effort needs to be made in enforcing laws in order to protect the rights of migrant workers, a greater effort still should be made on our part as Malaysian civilians to understand and to empathize with migrant workers in our nation, and to respect their rights as fellow human beings.
Ultimately, it starts with us.
*This piece is the personal opinion or view of the writer. The NRC11 does not endorse this view unless specified.
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