- I wish to highlight once again what the honourable Bangladeshi MP, Tanvir Shakil Joy revealed recently, that as many as a thousand of his citizens have been duped into working in Malaysia but ended up languishing in prisons due to their undocumented status.
- As a member of parliament, I am equally and deeply grieved over the plight of these prisoners and their families in Bangladesh, many of whom have been scammed, exploited and extorted in hoping to work in Malaysia.
Many of them have sold their properties in order to pay their way here, but they ended up being placed behind bars for crimes they did not commit. These Bangladeshis come to Malaysia hoping to get unattractive lowly-paid menial work often labelled “dirty, dangerous and difficult’ (3D) that very few Malaysians are willing to do. There is no doubt at all that words cannot describe their anguish, what’s more, the hope they have to pay for their children’s education just to enable them to get out of the poverty cycle. If this is not an affront to justice, then what is?
- The question that many of us have been asking time and again is: “How on earth could these undocumented foreign workers be allowed to enter our country without the knowledge of our authorities, especially the immigration department?”
There must be some loopholes and corruption involved, and the culprits that brought them here or facilitated their entry must, therefore, face the full wrath of the law.
- It is about time for the government to heed the advice to amend the law to enable one single ministry instead of multi-ministries to be in charge of the applications, vetting, processing and renewing the necessary documents for foreign workers. The more the bureaucracy, inevitably the more are the opportunities for corruption.
Furthermore, unless they were involved in criminal activities, these Bangladeshis who have become victims of injustice should be allowed to apply for job vacancies in the country instead of bringing in new workers. Placing them behind bars will only put a strain on our prison resources.
