KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 11 — The government should start scrutinising regulations on the hiring of migrant workers into the country, or risk worsening its record on human trafficking, activists and a lawmaker warned.

Tenaganita, which champions the rights of women and migrant workers, said that the lack of comprehensive policies on the welfare of migrant workers needs to be addressed immediately.

“There are only ad hoc policies so far and this will see the problem continuing.

“The case of the Indian migrant worker who was enslaved is not an isolated case,” the organisation’s executive director Glorene A. Das told Malay Mail Online.

Das was commenting on the modern-day slavery case of a migrant worker from India whose harrowing tale came to light recently.

The worker, 27-year-old Lokesh Sapaliga narrated his tale of slavery in Malaysia to Mumbai-based news agency “Mid Day”, which became a viral hit online.

Sapaliga, who answered an oil and gas industry recruitment call in Malaysia, claimed he was sold to a “human trafficking mafia” here and forced to work for a month in an oil palm waste factory in Sibu, Sarawak, in atrocious conditions.

He told Mid Day last week how he flew to Kuala Lumpur on September 19 after being promised a well-paying job at an oil and gas rig by Ram Support Service, a placement agency based in India’s Maharashtra state, before being smuggled to Sarawak where he was forced to work for up to 20 hours a day alongside hundreds of other migrant workers under close watch by violent factory guards.

In addition to the lack of proper mechanism and framework, Das also lamented the unnecessary meddling by ‘unrelated ministries’ as the root cause of the problem faced by the likes of Sapaliga.

“Tenaganita holds everybody responsible. This is the game they (government and employers) play.

“Last year alone, we (Tenaganita) handled 305 new cases consisting of more than 500 migrant workers who had come to see us and in all cases, there were clear elements of forced labour and human trafficking,” Das said.

She added that contract substitution, whereby the workers are given a different contract than the one they had initially signed up for was another regular occurring which prompts forced labour.

“Upon arrival they (migrant workers) are also given lesser wages and forced into long hours of work

They also face wrongful deduction of wages from levy for electricity and food, in addition to facing sub-human living conditions,” she said, adding that it is the state which needs to be held accountable since it formulates policies.

“Why is the Home Ministry interfering in migrant worker related matters? It should be the purview of the Human Resources Ministry. Their (Home Ministry) work is to simply issue visas. Why are they making policies with regards to migrant labour?

“End of the day, it is really about the profit. They know where the profit is coming from.”

Mary Magdalene Pereira, a former associate professor at Mara Technological University (Uitm) specialising in labour law and human rights, said that the inherent weaknesses in the related laws and enforcement agencies will see more people treated like Sapaliga.

Pereira said that since it is the government that holds the highest responsibility on this regard, there is nothing much which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can do as there are no proper laws and enforcement in place.

She also pointed out the “middle-men policy” in the recruitment of foreign workers as being the crux of the problem.

“There is no recourse for migrant workers here,” she told Malay Mail Online.

Klang MP Charles Santiago said that Malaysia has an obligation to abide by five out of eight core International Labor Organisation (ILO) conventions, which it has ratified.

Santiago said that the government also does not pay heed to cases of employers switching the employment contracts of migrant workers upon arrival, with an estimated 90 per cent of local employers retaining the passports of the workers.

He stressed that prosecution for forced labour trafficking offences is also ‘rare’ in Malaysia.

“Between 2012 and August 2013 there were a total of 120 cases brought under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, but resulted only in 23 convictions,” Santiago said in a statement.

He said that Putrajaya has to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted and victims are not treated as offenders.

“After years of warnings, the United States (US) recently downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3 in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, after the country ignored warnings to draw up a plan to comply with “the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.

“Despite the gravity of the problem, we have only seen scorn and complacency from ruling party leaders,” Santiago added.