Kuala Lumpur and Dhaka strike deal for migrant workers, but doubts remain about exploitation

Malaysia and Bangladesh have decided to resume the recruitment of Bangladeshi workers, which was blocked after the discovery of criminal cartels defrauding migrants. The agreement provides for equal social security benefits for foreign workers and the possibility of filing complaints in Bengali.

However, concerns remain about the persistence of recruitment monopolies and allegations of institutional complicity in exploitation. Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) - Talks have resumed to restart the recruitment of workers from Bangladesh to Malaysia.

The announcement came today after a meeting between Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Bangladesh's interim head of government, Muhammad Yunus.

The decision comes after Malaysia imposed a ban on the hiring of workers from Bangladesh in June last year, following the discovery of criminal cartels charging workers up to ,000 each for non-existent jobs, leaving thousands stranded and vulnerable to exploitation.

Anwar said his government had ‘prioritised’ Bangladesh's proposals and had begun helping workers ‘stranded’ in Malaysia. In May, Kuala Lumpur had already agreed to hire nearly 8,000 of the 17,000 Bangladeshis believed to have been defrauded.

The prime minister described Bangladesh as ‘an important partner’ whose ‘workers have been instrumental in contributing to our development.’

Between 2021 and 2023, Bangladesh sent up to 450,000 people to Malaysia for jobs often considered dirty, dangerous and difficult in factories, farms and restaurants. These “remittance warriors”, as they are known at home, are a vital source of income for Bangladesh, where inflation has been around 10% for a year.

Yunus pointed out that the money earned in Malaysia has enabled workers to support their education and improve their families' standard of living: ‘We hope that this door will remain open and continue to widen so that more young people can come to work in Malaysia.’

An important point that emerged from the talks is that Bangladeshi workers will be entitled to the same social security benefits as Malaysian workers and will be able to file complaints in their mother tongue, Bengali.

This represents a potential improvement in working conditions and greater legal protection for migrants. However, as the two governments move in this direction, migrant rights activists warn that more needs to be done to ensure the safety of workers.

Last year, UN experts urged the Malaysian and Bangladeshi governments to prosecute cartels and ‘certain high-ranking officials’ who had allowed the migrant scam to flourish, pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit commissions.

The allegations focus in particular on Malaysian technology company Bestinet, which was tasked by the government with managing a digital system for foreign workers.

An investigation in Bangladesh confirmed that Bestinet's Foreign Workers Centralised Management System is central to human trafficking and illicit financing of criminal organisations, and last year, Bangladeshi police requested the extradition of Bestinet's founder, Aminul Islam, who is accused of money laundering, extortion and human trafficking.

In addition, Malaysia has insisted on selecting a very limited number of Bangladeshi recruitment companies authorised to operate, creating a monopoly that often forces migrants to pay exorbitant fees, sometimes up to 10 times higher than the cost set by the government.

In May, however, the Bangladeshi government stated that Malaysia had not been involved in any kind of mismanagement.

This statement came a month after Malaysia's Ministry of Human Resources sent a letter to Dhaka asking it to retract the ‘baseless allegations’ in order to improve Malaysia's rating in the annual report on human trafficking published by the United States.

• Malaysia
• Bangladesh
• workers
• migrants
• recruitment