The Journey Of Hope

Safi Ullah leads us up a narrow flight of stairs and into a small airless cubicle that is his temporary home. The 33-year-old Bangladeshi is nervous. “Please don’t tell anyone where I’m working,” he pleads, eyes darting. We agree and he looks visibly relieved. He even manages a little smile as he shows us photos of his wife and child. “I’ve not seen them in months,” he says. “I’m afraid I might not see them again. I feel like I am trapped in Malaysia.”

Safi Ullah has every reason to be fearful. He has no money, no passport and is stuck in a country that’s not known for being hospitable to undocumented foreigners. RELA, a civil paramilitary volunteer force formed by the Malaysian government, conducts regular raids on illegal migrants. The irony? Safi Ullah had paid good money to come to Malaysia. A manpower agent in Bangladesh had promised him a lucrative job in an electronics factory in exchange for a fee. “I thought I would make lots of money for my family,” he says.

But he hasn’t. In fact, since arriving in Malaysia, he’s not worked a single day in any electronics factory. Safi Ullah, you see, is a victim of a recruitment scam. And he is not alone.

Human rights activists say thousands – possibly millions – of migrants are cheated each year. The main targets: workers from countries such as Bangladesh, China and India. The key culprits? Unscrupulous recruitment agents, greedy employers and corrupt government officials who collude to make huge profits through an illegal but thriving trade in work permits and visas.

A Thriving Trade

“Migrants are recruited to work in phantom companies,” says Abdul Aziz bin Ismail, an Industrial Relations Officer from the Club Employees Union Peninsular Malaysia, who is now helping Safi Ullah with his case. “These companies have no physical factories, no plantations, nothing. Why would they need so many workers?”

The answer, it seems, lies in the kickbacks these companies receive from manpower agents: monetary incentives to reward them for procuring valuable visas and work permits.

Dangerous Existence

For months, Safi Ullah led a precarious existence. He went to the Bangladeshi High Commission in Kuala Lumpur. There, he discovered the magnitude of the problem. The Commission was surrounded by weary, sometimes angry, Bangladeshis, all with similar sad tales to tell.

In the day, they would wait their turn to talk to a High Commission official. Few could produce any documents to prove their identities. Most say their passports were taken from them almost as soon as they got off the plane. All were stuck in a strange land.