"No Jobs, no justice, yet more intake?"

AS the governments of Malaysia and Bangladesh meet to discuss the reopening of Malaysia’s foreign labour market to 1.2 million workers, Tenaganita raises an urgent alarm: restarting recruitment without addressing ongoing injustices will only deepen an already unfolding humanitarian crisis.

Between January 2022 and September 2024, Malaysia brought in 494,675 migrant workers, including 351,683 from Bangladesh, through official and documented channels. These workers arrived with valid papers and job promises—but for tens of thousands, those promises proved empty. Many were lured in by false assurances, having paid up to RM25,000 in recruitment fees, often through debt, only to find themselves jobless, unpaid, homeless, and at constant risk of arrest.

The government cannot wash its hands of this gross injustice by blaming "rogue" recruitment agencies. These workers could not have entered Malaysia for non-existent jobs without the active involvement and approval of government agencies. It is time for these authorities to acknowledge their role and take full responsibility.

This is not mere mismanagement. This is state-enabled exploitation.

Our investigations have uncovered at least 150 companies that were granted worker quotas despite lacking any legitimate business operations or capacity to employ migrant labour. These companies effectively operated as labour traffickers with state-sanctioned authority, leaving workers to languish in squalid dormitories. One such facility became infamously known as “Kem Potong Leher,” after a young Bangladeshi worker, in utter despair, ended his own life.

Yet instead of fixing this broken, corrupt system, the government is now preparing to open the floodgates once more.

Photo for illustration purposes only. - BERNAMA FILE PIX

Tenaganita strongly opposes any new recruitment of migrant workers into Malaysia until the following urgent actions are taken:

• Immediate legalisation and job placement for stranded workers who arrived through official channels but were abandoned.

• A public moratorium on new recruitment to prevent further trafficking until the system is reformed.

• Transparent publication and public scrutiny of the new Malaysia–Bangladesh Memorandum of Understanding.

• Independent oversight mechanisms, including active civil society participation, to ensure accountability, transparency and protection of worker rights.

• An end to the criminalisation of stranded workers, many of whom became undocumented through no fault of their own. Punishing them for the system’s failures is both unjust and inhumane.

Let us be clear: these are not irregular migrants. They are documented workers betrayed by an opaque and corrupt recruitment system that profits from their suffering while stripping them of their most basic rights.

As we have said before: Malaysia does not need to recruit new workers, not while there are thousands already in the country who are unemployed and waiting for the opportunity to contribute.

What Malaysia needs now is not more recruitment, but a real reckoning. A reckoning with the systemic failures that have enabled widespread exploitation to persist unchecked. This must begin with an honest acknowledgment of the crisis: thousands of migrant workers have been deceived, stranded and denied justice.

Since 2023, Tenaganita has consistently called for an end to this cycle of deception and violence. Today, we renew that call with greater urgency. The exploitation of migrant workers in Malaysia is not merely a labour issue, it is a grave human rights violation, and a national shame.

Glorene A Das is the executive director of Tenaganita. The opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Sinar Daily.