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Legal suit against Manivaas Trading for unpaid wages and monies owed to its former employees amounting to about RM2 million   Press  Conference Statement by John Chung (Seremban, Saturday): About 500 former managers, agents and members of a trading company called Manivaas Trading have today filed a legal suit against the company and its director/sole proprietor Manikam a/l Vellasamy at the Seremban High Court for unpaid wages and monies owed to them amounting to about RM2 million, with the help of Negri Sembilan DAP vice-chairman P. Gunasekaran, Selangor DAP lawyers and myself.  These former contract workers of the company are Indian and mostly white-collar workers and housewives from various branches (now defunct) of the company in Selangor and Negri Sembilan, i.e. Kuala Selangor, Shah Alam, Port Dickson and Nilai.   The company, which is a distributor of food items, household products and Hindu prayer items, was set up about three years ago.   Workers were engaged by the company to perform home-based packaging work. In exchange, they would be paid RM500 every month. However, they had to first enter a contract of service with the company whereby they were required to make a security deposit payment of RM1,400 each.   However, the company later failed to pay the wages due to them. This went on for many months. Eventually, the workers ran out of patience and decided to terminate their contract of service and demanded the refund of their security payment. Various attempts were made by the managers and agents of the company to recover their money but to no avail as Manikam repeatedly broke his promise to refund them their payments.   More than a hundred police reports were also lodged by the agents and members against the company and its director for alleged cheating, but to date the police has yet to take any action.   The matter was then brought to the attention of Selangor DAP by an agent of the company’s branch in Shah Alam, Elangoo a/l Mariappan. Despite highlighting the plight of the workers in the press and sending a letter of demand to the company and its director, they had kept silent and failed to respond.   Finally, the aggrieved managers, agents and members of the company decided that the only way to recover their unpaid wages and monies was to take legal action against the company and its director with the help of DAP.   Over the last two months, Gunasekaran and I, together with Selangor DAP lawyers, Uma Parvathy and Jeyapalan Mahesan, had met with about 500 of those affected (numbering an estimated 7,000), who came forward to seek our help.   The former managers, agents and members of Manivaas Trading are entitled to their unpaid wages and refund of their security deposit. We have confidence in the courts and believe that justice will be served.  (31/1/2004) *  John Chung,  Selangor DAP Organising Secretary