A Bit Of A Dead End In Malaysia

Engineering degree—check. Passport—check. Overseas job—check. This New Year's Eve, Amrit Das from Tripura and Dinesh Midde and Sanjit Roy from West Bengal were all set for a fresh start. Assured of well-paid jobs in a major "oil and gas company" in Malaysia, they looked forward to the perks, including free accommodation, medical expenses and generous overtime.

Six months later, the three workers have become symbols of the exploitation Indian workers are subjected to in Malaysia. Far from the public eye in India, a large number of Indian workers in Malaysia have virtually become refugees, taking shelter at a hostel of sorts run by the Indian High Commission. The case of these three workers is particularly poignant, for they are unable to return to India unless they pay a hefty fine to their employer, a penalty they cannot afford and which experts say is illegal.

The issue is serious, for Indian authorities in Malaysia say they have already repatriated 8,000 workers over 2014-15, while a steady stream of penury-struck workers continues to knock at their doors.

Of course, during the six-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, 28-year-old Amrit never imagined it would come to this. He thought only about how he would send money home to his ailing fisherman father, an older brother whose health failed from overwork and a younger brother in school. The MYR 3,000 (Rs 50,000) salary an employment agency in India had said he would get in Malaysia was more than he'd ever dreamed of.

The dream turned into a nightmare the moment he landed at Kuala Lumpur, at 6.30 AM on February 10. The Indian employment agent, Kabir Hossain Mandal, received Amrit and 20-odd other Indian workers on the same flight, at the airport. He commandeered all their passports. In India, Mondal and his partner Firoj had claimed to own an employment agency, "Rohan International". Amrit had paid them Rs 1,00,000, taking out a loan, for an engineer's job in Malaysia. "We were told our passport is being taken for signing our employment contracts, after which we would get it back," Amrit says. That was the last time he saw his passport. Nor did a contract with the company materialise.

Everything the agents had told Amrit in India quickly unravelled into lies. The Malaysian company, Syarikat Pembinaan & Kejuruteraan Naga turned out to be a construction labour contractor, not a petroleum giant. He was not brought there as a well-paid engineer but as a "General Worker", a category of unskilled labourer under Malaysian law, which includes low paid manual workers. It was work Amrit was neither trained for nor willing to do.

"I repeatedly told the company owner Mr Naga, 'Sir, please give me my passport. I will go back to India.' But they didn't give me my passport and forced me to work like labour," Amrit says, in a series of conversations over the last few days over Whatsapp, email and his cellphone. His salary turned out to be Rs 670 per day or roughly Rs 20,000 per month, around a third of what was promised.

At work, which was a construction site near Penang, Amrit developed a friendship with Sanjit and Dinesh, who were equally stunned by the sudden turn of fate. "The owner used hammers, rods or a helmet to beat me if I questioned the work or salary. He beat me so much—he didn't give me my last salary," says Sanjit. Accommodation wasn't free either. Pembinaan charged the equivalent of Rs 1,000 each for "housing" eight workers under a small tin roof over which hung an electric wire. "We had to do everything in that filthy room. Since we cooked on a gas stove, we always worried about a fire breaking out," says he. There was no medical care.

On May 8, unable to take the abuse any more, Amrit ran away to the Indian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur with Sanjit and Dinesh. Here, their lives took a stranger turn. Told that they can't return to India until they pay a hefty penalty to their Malaysian employer, they have been running from pillar to post seeking help. Initially, the company had demanded MYR 3,00,000 (R 60,00,000) as damages. That was brought to MYR 4,000 (Rs 66,000) each after negotiations in which the tout, the company, Indian High Commission officials and the three workers were present.

"During negotiations the company and agent told us we will have to pay, they threatened us that we will never be able to return to India otherwise," says Sanjit. "The High Commission says we should pay too, else the company will get us arrested," he says.

"Malaysian law does not require any such penalty to be paid by workers. It is bizarre to even imagine this. If their passports have not been returned by the employer, the Indian government should assist them with travel documents and send them to India," says Karuppiah Somasundram, an assistant secretary in the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC).

In June, tired of waiting, Sanjit, Amrit and Dinesh approached shopkeepers outside the High Commission shelter and, in their broken English, asked for help. The hunt led them to MTUC's Somasundram and the Malaysian Bar Council. Both organisations told them the penalties demanded were unwarranted under Malaysian law.

"It is really bizarre—how can three ordinary workers cause damage worth hundreds of thousands," says Somasundram, who plans to make their case public worldwide, having framed an appeal for better working conditions for expat workers in Malaysia. The High Commission itself acknowledges the high level of exploitation in Malaysia, particularly at the hands of touts masquerading as agents promising jobs to the lesser-educated.

When they first arrived at the shelter it housed more than 20 other workers of the same company as them. One by one, all others left, except Amrit, Sanjit and Dinesh. Those who know of their case now refer to them as the "Indian Embassy [sic] Victims" in Malaysia.

"We are being taught a lesson for not paying the company that tortured us," says Sanjit. "The other workers left because we took up this matter. We helped them and now we are stuck," says Amrit. "I am also from a poor family," says Dinesh. "We just want to return to India. When we never even signed a contract, how can we have breached it," Sanjit adds.

All workers leaving the shelter paid the penalty demanded by the Malaysian company, MYR 1,500, or Rs 25,000 each. But from these three, the company wants MYR 4,000, or Rs 66,000, in addition to a month's unpaid wages. "We initially agreed to pay 1,500 ringgit like everybody else. But they demanded more from us to teach us a lesson," says Sanjit.

"If we had not run away we may have been killed. They beat me so badly—worse than an animal," says Dinesh, "But here we are asked to pay them money we don't have." "Twice, when they came to know at the hostel that we are taking outsider's suggestions, our cell phones were taken away," says Sanjit.

The workers, being educated engineers, are fighting it out on principle. Amrit says he spoke to officials at the ministry of external affairs in Delhi, who told them that the government of India is supposed to pay for safe passage of workers like them.

India's High Commissioner to Malaysia, TS Tirumurti, says that 27 Indian workers from the same company had sought shelter this year. Twenty three have been repatriated to India, many at the Indian government's expense. Those who got away did pay a "levy" of around MYR 1,500. Says Trimurti, "Look at the larger perspective—we have been able to solve all pending disputes with the company but this one, involving these three. Their case, right now, is at a bit of a dead end."