Under attack, Malaysia's migrant workers seek honest living

Three years after leaving Nepal to work in Malaysia's construction industry, Bahadur Ram is fluent in Malay, the national language.

But he remains an outsider.

Ram and the millions of other foreign workers in Malaysia find themselves under attack from officials who blame them for crime and look for ways to place them under tighter control.

"We are aware that there are some here who create trouble but why are they always blaming us who do honest work?" Ram, 23, said as he ate a breakfast of fried noodles at a roadside food stall before starting another 12-hour shift.

He is helping to build a high-end shopping mall along Bukit Bintang Road, the glittering heart of Kuala Lumpur.

"We come here to work, to help our families back home. A lot of our sweat and blood have gone into constructing some of Malaysia's most beautiful buildings but we still feel unappreciated," said Slamet Kateyat, 45.

The soft-spoken native of East Java, in Indonesia, has spent five years in Malaysia's construction industry. He earns 70 ringgit (20 dollars) a day, while newer workers say they only get 50 ringgit a day.

Malaysia has become a magnet for foreigners seeking to escape poverty and unemployment in their home countries.

There are roughly 2.5 million foreign workers here, both legal and illegal, who account for about nine percent of the country's population of 27 million and nearly a quarter of the 10.5-million-strong workforce, officials have said.

The workers supply much-needed labour in the agricultural, construction, manufacturing and services sectors.

But last month, a junior government minister called for a review of recruitment policies, citing what he said were large numbers of foreigners in jail.

Malaysia's police chief Musa Hassan said in February that crimes committed by foreign workers, especially Indonesians, had escalated. Foreigners committed about 5,000 criminal acts last year, or two percent of the 232,620 cases recorded, he noted.

He reportedly suggested confining foreigners to their work premises and putting them under 24-hour surveillance to prevent crime.

The immigration enforcement director, Ishak Mohamed, said recently that Malaysia plans to arrest up to half a million illegal foreign employees this year.

The government is also mulling a bill which would recommend that workers register with their employers if they wished to go out during breaks or days off.

"People can go insane that way," Ram said.

"Are they also going to confine Malaysians who commit a crime and control their movements too?" he said at the food stall run by Murni Sumardi, 58, an Indonesian woman who used to work as a maid in Malaysia.

She said the proposed restrictions on workers would leave them in the same position as the maids, "who are never allowed out."

After two years as a domestic helper, Sumardi had saved enough to open her stall in an alley in the heart of the city.

"I tried to open a food stall in Indonesia but I only made 150 ringgit a month. I couldn't survive and came back here where I earn a decent living," she said.

Hamzah, 43, an Indonesian who now has his own cobbler service, said he had read about the police chief's reported suggestions.

"This is actually to control us, curb what little freedom we have," he said.

"It was not so bad when I first came here in 1982. Then at least we were treated as brothers and were valued for our work."

Slamet, the Indonesian labourer, said he had also heard of the proposed control measures.

"If it happens, then we would just have to obey," he said. "It's not like we have a lot of free time anyway."

Slamet and about 100 other workers live together in a "kongsi", or workers' quarters, where up to five unmarried men share a room. Husbands and wives get a box-like room to themselves.

The plywood structures with zinc roofs usually have electricity but no running water.

Home Minister Mohammed Radzi Sheikh Ahmad has said the proposed foreign workers bill would call for "proper accommodations at the workplace, where it is properly monitored, where they have systems to ensure that the workers do not go astray."

Slamet said workers would welcome a proper place to live, "but it really sounds as if the Malaysian government would like to have control over our movements."

He said the main reason some workers resorted to crime was because their wages were sometimes not paid.

"Maybe the government should monitor these companies who always cheat us of our salaries, instead of always targeting us," Slamet said.

Last year 363,000 illegal immigrants were arrested and deported while about 200 employers were charged with hiring illegal workers, Ishak said.

Hamzah, the cobbler, said he feels the foreigners are despised.

"Maybe they should send all of us back. Then we'll see who's going to build their skyscrapers," he said, as he repaired the broken heel of a client's shoe.

BY : Ivy Sam AFP