Consequence of non-transparency

The long awaited access to the Malaysian labour market has suffered a major jolt. The authorities there have declared that they would not employ workers from any country until a stock taking of the labour needs was done.

The announcement came within 24 hours of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for deployment of Bangladeshi workers over the next three years. It was the result of protracted negotiations between the two countries. The MoU also marked the recognition of the abject failure of the G2G policy stubbornly pursued by both parties and was intended to be the basis of what has been officially dubbed as the G2G+ policy. The revised policy provides room for third party engagement in labour recruitment.

The volte-face of the Malaysian authorities has understandably put their Bangladeshi counterparts in a difficult position. A lot of hope was pinned on the deal. Those following the negotiations are aware that it was the Malaysian authorities who enjoyed the upper-hand at the negotiating table and Bangladesh had to placate some of their unreasonable demands. This was done ostensibly to gain a foothold in the lost labour market, which Bangladesh has been striving for a long time. Therefore, there is every reason for the Bangladeshi authorities to feel betrayed by the latest Malaysian decision.

So, what led the authorities in Kuala Lumpur to reverse the decision reached only a day earlier? The decision was sudden, but was it entirely unexpected? Not really.

A storm was brewing on the labour recruitment issue in Malaysia for quite some time. Not only did the major stakeholders there feel outraged at the outbreak of the news that the country would bring in 1.5 million Bangladeshis over the next three years, there was a palpable lack of coordination among various government agencies involved and engagement with other stakeholders. This was often driven by selfish interest by players holding key positions of the state.  Despite the fact that migrant workers have contributed in building modern Malaysia 'brick by brick', the policymaking process in dealing with them is fraught with inconsistencies and ad-hocism. The recent decision has not been any exception.

Let us now examine how lack of transparency in the recruitment process and public perception of corruption of high officials have created what can be termed as an anti-migrant milieu there. This cuts across a whole range of actors that banded together, flexed their muscle and forced the government to renege on its commitment to take more workers from Bangladesh. The baseless and overenthusiastically publicised figure "1.5 million", to secure political mileage at the Bangladeshi end, galvanised the detractors at the Malaysian end.

In its reaction to the figure 1.5 million, the Malaysian Economic Action Council claimed that the country "only needs 1.72 million migrant workers to fulfill the needs of 3D (dirty, difficult and dangerous) sector". It also noted that increased inflow of foreign workers would adversely affect the wages of lower income groups.

The Malaysian Trade Union Congress was also against the move and handed over a memorandum to the Human Resource Ministry on February 18, stating that the "influx would have an adverse impact on the local industries and employees". It demanded that the government spell out "which sectors will absorb the workers and what is the rationale for bringing them in".

Observing that the labour market in Malaysia at the moment is "soft and weak" the head of Malaysian Employers Federation demanded that any move to bring in more workers "must be based on actual demand". He also noted that despite the low unemployment rate (3.2 percent) 400,000 locals still needed jobs and underscored, not surprisingly, "the social problems that the influx would cause". Responding to the claims by the Deputy Home Minister that the government was acting in response to the needs expressed by the private sector, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers categorically stated that it had never approached the government on this matter.

Immigration is a state subject in this federal country. Soon after the news broke out about the Bangladesh-Malaysia deal, the Sabah government reiterated its three-year-old position not to allow Bangladeshi workers in the state. Claiming that Bangladeshis did not have necessary experience and skills in the plantation work, the land minister of the government of Sarawak also made it clear that he too was opposed to the deployment of Bangladeshis.

The resistance to bring in workers was not necessarily restricted to the above stakeholders. Even rights activists were against the move, albeit for different reasons.  

The Chair of the human rights organisation Hindraf Makkal Sakthi, a former Senator and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's office not so long ago, observed that there was no justification to bring in more workers. He contested Deputy Prime Minister Hamid's contention that Malaysians were not interested in the 3D work on the ground that they take up those jobs in Singapore, Australia and other countries. The Chair insisted that there is a ready pool of unutilised and un/underemployed labour in the country that included 850,000 displaced estate workers, 350,000 stateless people in the peninsula along with nearly 3 million workers with irregular status. The Hindraf head viewed the decision to bring in Bangladesh workers as "a move to enrich the elite cronies, flood the market even more with labour and thus reduce wages and assist mega companies accomplish their vision of the maximising profit while paying the bare minimum".

Expressing concern over rising xenophobic and racist sentiments the Lawyers for Liberty questioned the move as well. It claimed that regularising the refugees and migrants already in the country would be a more sensible and practical path to pursue to fill the labour gap. The Master Builders' Association of Malaysia also urged the government to give priority to legalising the existing irregular migrants to meet the demand for large infrastructure projects such as Rapid and MRT projects.

A coalition of various workers' union, Rapat, had threatened a "public uprising" if the government went ahead with its plan. They also posed the question: what made the Deputy PM Zahid switch from his earlier position against over-dependence on foreign workers?
The Small and Medium Industry Association of Malaysia reported a drop of 30 to 50 percent in their sales in 2015, and thus did not find any rationale in the decision to bring workers. Ikhlas, the Small and Medium Entrepreneurs Alliance, gave an ultimatum to produce a list of companies that require Bangladeshi workers and threatened to organise a protest in front of Bangladesh High Commission premises next month. Ikhlas accused Deputy Prime Minister Hamid of hatching a conspiracy to undermine the credibility of the Prime Minister.

The Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) opposed the measure on the ground that the government did not share the details of the new arrangement. It insisted that any "any increase in cost must be undertaken with prior consultation with employers who would have to bear the immediate cost burden". It also called on the government to remove "non-value added process and involvement of unnecessary third party service providers", a message that should not be difficult to comprehend by a discernable reader.

The above facts amply demonstrate that the Malaysian authorities had to pull back from its plan to bring Bangladeshi workers under severe domestic compulsion. It was a price they had to pay for making decisions that did not factor in economic and social reality. Perhaps there is a lesson to learn here for the policymakers of Bangladesh, the source country.

The writer teaches International Relations at the University of Dhaka. He also coordinates the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU).