MAY 9 — This was supposed to have been a May 1 column, which makes it a week late. But when we’re talking about the very institution which our economy depends on — i.e. labour — I doubt people mind. 

In my previous stint in a financial institution, I felt I performed beyond expectations but still faced problems because certain parties decided I was a squeaky wheel which should learn to fall (or spin) in line. Of course, I was pissed but guess what? My “problems” are absolutely nothing compared to those faced by the average foreign worker in Bolehland. 

“Employers must not abuse their workers.” This sounds as natural and obvious as, “Chicken rice should include chicken,” but not — it seems — for migrant workers.

Our Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Myanmar and Indonesian workers are the most abused people in the country. We’re #4 in the world when it comes to migrant-worker population, but our 6 million-ish foreign workers are constantly vulnerable to exploitation.

For white-collar folks like me, “exploitation” may simply mean (at most) being asked to conduct a workshop that somebody else said she would. But for the non-Malaysian factory dude, the term could be tied to physical abuse, being forced to work on Sunday and do overtime without extra pay. 

Some kiam-siap companies also do not provide transport for these workers, which means an hour-plus walk to get to work. Throw in negative 5-star working and living conditions and debt-bondage into the picture and something becomes clear: We have millions of slaves working in Malaysia.

Oh, there’s also “secondary” abuse, like when spoilt-brat Malaysians dump their sticky popcorn all over the cinema seats because when everyone laughs and leaves the cinema the Bangladeshi worker will appear (seemingly from nowhere) to ensure the place is squeaky clean for the next viewing.

By their stripes, we are kept healthy

In every nation, there are groups which are excluded in order that social order can sustain itself. There is a political price some segments of the country must pay so everyone else can go about their ordinary lives. 

In Malaysia, as in many other developing countries, these would include the poor, the indigenous peoples (or Orang Asli), and the foreign workers.

People like the Bangladeshi man who vacuums our cars, the South Indian who sweeps our cinema floors, the Nepalese who guards our nurseries and the Indonesians who lay the bricks which add to our cloud-scrapers are living on the margins of Malaysian society. 

Since this is election season, we should note that long before the terms “phantom voter” or hantu (Malay for ghost) became hot terms, these people were already ”ghosts.”

We see them but choose not to. We walk past them but might as well be walking “through” them. We need them to do those tasks we’d rather not, but beyond that their existence means less to us than what’s for lunch. 

We know little — and care even less — about their families, their cultures, their struggles, their pain. 

By their stripes, we are kept healthy. They have taken up our pain and bore our suffering, but we leave them to their affliction and condemnation.

Honestly, for some Chinese, the spirits which come out around August are given more respect and attention than the foreigner who cleans our coffee mugs and worries if her salary can help feed her family in Sumatra. The phrase “hungry ghosts” takes on new meaning here.

These people are largely invisible, kept out of sight, refused a social presence yet critical for the running of our nation. Malaysia needs them but excludes them. The excrement that we dispose of quietly and in private is the very same substance that nurtures our national body.

In other words, these folks are already being treated like s***, not least within a capitalist framework which values profit above equality (or anything else, in fact).

For that to happen, Malaysians need to stop looking at our foreign friends like ghosts. We must, as a nation, stop treating them like something we can’t wait to flush away.

Justice-loving Malaysians and foreign workers in Malaysia have a common bond, a “one language”: We all share in the universality of struggle, of personal/national trauma. 

Hopefully this transnational vulnerability can also affirm our neighbourliness, the willingness to help another nation-in-migration “fit in” better to ours. This way, too, there will be fewer suffering phantoms in our country?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.