Migrant workers: Malaysia’s hungry ghosts

More than 12 years a slave?

“Employers must not abuse their workers.” This sound as natural and obvious as, “Chicken rice should include chicken,” but not – it seems – for migrant workers in Malaysia. Reading this report on the neglect of workers’ welfare in the country, a few phrases slapped me hard:

“Foreign workers are the most victimized in Malaysia’s labour force” – surprise surprise, right? Cows would have to jump over the moon the day ex-patriates and directors were the most neglected and abused, no?

And this is just abuse of the wilful kind. There’s also ‘secondary’ abuse, like when spoilt-brat Malaysians dump their sticky popcorn all over the cinema seats because when everyone laughs andleaves the cinema the Bangladeshi worker will appear (seemingly from nowhere) to ensure the place is squeaky clean for the next viewing.

“The workers claimed physical abuse, and said they were forced to work on Sunday and overtime without pay. They also said the company did not provide transport for them, forcingthem to walk more than an hour to get to work” – The temptation we must avoid is to view this as a result of the ‘heartless’ factory owners. Make no mistake: Getting smacked, losing your weekendsand ‘makan sendiri’ policies are simply playing out the logic of capitalism.

Other consequences include the fact that an OVERWHELMING majority of courses offered by Malaysian educational institutions involve business and finance.

“Malaysian labour laws are applicable to both local and foreign workers, but foreigners wereoften exploited ... employers often frustrate attempts to form labour unions and underhanded tactics are used to suppress organised labour.” – Wouldn’t it be POETIC if most of these factoryowners and managers voted for Pakatan Rakyat? Let’s save Malaysia from Umno’s corruption! But in our own business? Different story. In fact, let’s take steps to curb, stop and basically eradicate therights of these folks who make us money.

Finally ...

“Global labour rights body Verite claims that 'modern-day slavery' was rife in Malaysia's electronics industry: One in three workers in the sector suffered abusive work and living conditions and were also subjected to debt-bondage.” – ah, Malaysia boleh again. We’re not just among the most corrupted places on the planet, we also got a thing for slaves.

I sure hope these factory bosses don’t attend or give too many talks on the Declaration of Human Rights, ‘cos their workers seem to have fewer rights than the kuey teow I sometimes have for lunch.

Solomon Northup may have been writing in Johore itself?

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 ‘Bangla’ man who vacuums our cars, the South Indian who sweeps our cinema floors, the Nepalese who guards our nurseries and the Indons’ who lay the bricks which add up to our cloud- scrapers are living on the margins of Malaysian society.

Long before the terms ‘phantom voter’or ‘hantu’ (Malay for ‘ghost’) became hot and angry terms during the last general elections, 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 thanwhat’s for lunch. We know little – and care 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 herfamily 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 therunning 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 sh*t, not least within a capitalist framework which values profit above equality (or anything else, in fact).

Regardless, 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? – October 5, 2014.