Trading away rights for money

FMT LETTER: From Irene Fernandez, via e-mail

By agreeing that recruitment agents should be given the power to resolve the deep-rooted issues surrounding the recruitment of domestic workers, the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia, led by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono respectively, have demonstrated that they believe that the lives, dignity and rights of Indonesian women should be placed in the clutches of agents and recruitment companies whose main purpose is to maximise the amount of profit they can make through the trade of womens labour.

According to the reports in Malaysian newspapers both governments maintain that market forces should determine the recruitment and wages of domestic workers, and that the details of the process should be handled by recruitment agencies. If we had any doubt that domestic workers have been turned into commodities for export, the doubt is cleared in the following statement by the Malaysian Minister of Human Resources, Richard Riot: The government to government method did not seem to work and (the problem would be) be better handled at business-to-business level as the factor here is the money.

How can money be the deciding factor when this entire process affects the rights and lives of women? Are domestic workers now on sale, to be bargained and traded as commodities to the highest bidder sanctioned and approved by the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia?

Recruitment agents have been key culprits in violating the rights of domestic workers. They have falsified the age of young girls so that they can work legally as domestic workers; theyve stripped and searched domestic workers upon arrival in Malaysia to ensure they do not have information of support services or organisations they can contact for help on them; they have threatened domestic workers with arrest, detention and deportation if they do not remain subservient to their employers even when she is abused.

They have failed to produce clear contracts between the domestic worker and the employer so that both are clear of their responsibilities and rights. Domestic workers rescued by Tenaganita have told us how agents will cut their hair short, tell them that they cannot wear any earrings or accessories, and that they shouldnt spend more than five minutes on themselves; the identity must be stripped, and it is reinforced that their sole duty is to serve their employer.

To say that there are good recruitment agents is to deflect from the violence embedded in the system, the tacit approval granted to agents and employers to do as they wish with the women working in their homes.

Nothing of substance has changed in the legal environment that domestic workers in Malaysia have to exist in. Domestic workers are still not recognized as workers but are instead deemed as servants under the Malaysian Employment Act. There is no standard contract, they do not enjoy even one day off a week, and their passports are kept by the employers. In short, the Malaysian government has created a fertile work environment for abuse and rights violations of domestic workers and placed the domestic worker in a very vulnerable situation.

From 2012 to 2013, Tenaganita received 313 cases involving domestic workers, with over 1200 forms of rights violations including non-payment of wages, withholding of passports, isolation, denied the right to communicate with anyone out of the home, physical, verbal and sexual violence, food deprivation and forced extension of contract. It is frightening that 32% of the women alleged sexual abuse and rape; 30% of the domestic workers when rescued were severely malnourished due to denial of decent and sufficient food.

Eighty percent had their wages not paid for more than six months; many workers complained that they were forced to work beyond their two year contract as employers found it difficult to get replacement, and in 100% of the cases their passports were held by their employers. These cases and the trends and patterns that we can draw from them reflect how domestic work is a form of bonded labour in Malaysia.

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Trading away rights for money