Malaysian recruitment halted

Needless to say, we are as dumbfounded as everyone else in the country with the sudden announcement by the Malaysian government that it is putting a full stop to all foreign recruitment of workers. What is even more damning for Bangladesh is that an estimated 200,000 workers are working there without proper documents, and these workers are in all likelihood going to face deportation. The new policy throws into question what is to become of the recent government-to-government MoU that would be taking some 1.5 million new workers from Bangladesh to work in Malaysia over the next three years.

What has become clear is that the Malaysian authorities have buckled to domestic pressures that had been mounting on calls to do something about foreign workers residing in the country. A general slowdown of the economy, with hundreds of thousands of irregular workers working at wages lower than the national standard, has contributed to an air of hostility against unregistered workers.

A total about face after so much fanfare about taking Bangladeshi workers comes as a bolt from the blue. Needless to say, we fail to see why a proper assessment was not done before coming to such a drastic decision. We hope that Malaysian authorities will reconsider their decision to arrest and deport such a large number of poor migrant workers from our country,  the bulk of whom remain "undocumented" for no fault of their own – they are victims of unscrupulous recruiters and employers.