KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 23: Thousands of migrant workers are being forced to camp for days in a stuffy car park at the airport in Malaysia’s biggest city, sleeping on the floor surrounded by garbage and urine, while they wait for their new employers to collect them.
Every day, more than 1,000 migrant workers arrive at the Kuala Lumpur international airport, with the number swelling to 3,000 at the weekend, said Saravana Kumar, deputy head of immigration at the airport during an interview last week.
Most of them arrive from Bangladesh, and a few from Nepal, Pakistan, India and other countries, eager to join a burgeoning labour force of menial workers, such as carpenters, cleaners, security guards, waiters and shop clerks who help keep Malaysia’s economic success humming.
But complaints that migrants were loitering among tourists at the pristine airport, sprawling about with their piles of scruffy luggage, prompted authorities to set up a makeshift immigration processing centre in the airport’s multi-storey car park, Saravana said.
The processing centre was meant to facilitate a speedy processing -- within eight hours of their arrival -- and enable immigration officials to keep track of everyone in one place. But some workers are forced to spend several nights in the car park because their employers or agents are either late to collect them, or do not show up at all, Saravana said.
“Our objective was to give them a better facility. But when the number goes beyond control, that’s when we get stuck,” Saravana told The Associated Press, briskly walking around the car park, where groups of tired-looking foreigners were huddled quietly.
The plight of the workers is the rarely-seen underbelly of Malaysia’s economic success. With increasing prosperity, job opportunities have increased and Malaysians are unwilling to do the low-status jobs, which are now being farmed out to imported workers from poor countries.
While an average monthly salary of 500 ringgit ($145) is pittance for locals, it is a princely sum back home for the estimated 1.8 million foreign workers who now form the backbone of the country’s workforce.
A majority of migrant workers are from Indonesia and come by ship, and so it is the South Asians arriving by air who since Sept 1 have been herded into the car park for processing.
On one day last week, a group of more than 50 workers huddled on the floor. They had arrived the night before, and their employer -- a furniture manufacturer -- was about to pick them up. Shalahin Shahin, a carpenter, said they had slept on the car park floor.
“How to sleep? The smell! And so dirty. No bed, no toilet, no nothing,” said Shalahin, 31, adding that his group had not eaten for a day and had to buy their own water.
Officials say agents and employers sometimes show up late to save costs -- contracted workers can arrive in batches on different flights. To transport all of them together to the work place is cheaper than making several trips. Sometimes there is miscommunication between local agents and their counterparts in labour-supplying countries.
Some workers become victims of outright fraud: agents never show up and pocket the fee -- usually a sum equivalent of more than $2,000 -- which the workers had paid for the recruitment.Last week, about 1,000 workers were squatting side-by-side in long rows as they waited to get their passports stamped. Others were napping in cubicles nearby.
Garbage was strewn about the floor, and a stench of rubbish and urine hung in the hot, stuffy air. Many officials wore surgical masks over their mouths.
Security officials in army-green uniforms barked orders for the workers to line up along the traffic lane markings, occasionally tapping one of them with a stick to keep them in line.
“We’re all humans. You have to treat them with respect ... They sometimes forget they are all foreign workers, not illegal immigrants,” said Abraham Jacob, a Malaysian factory manager who came to collect three workers.
Officials say they have started moving workers to a nearby centre -- previously used for illegal immigrants -- with proper toilets and food provided. They will be housed there for a maximum three days before being deported if their employers do not show up, said Saravana.
Officials from Malaysia and Bangladesh met on Friday to discuss the problem.
“Of course, you cannot solve all problems in a day ... We need more negotiations,” said Talat Mahmud Khan, an embassy official in charge of labour affairs.—AP
