Adrian made this revelation at the migrant worker’s forum held at the LoyarBuruk Citizen’s Centre.
According to Adrian, the employers repatriate such workers to avoid being penalised by local authorities.
“If migrant workers were to die at construction sites, then industrial action will be taken against the employers by the authorities.”
Adrian stressed that whenever accidents involving workers took place at workplaces, it must be reported immediately.
“Whenever there is an accident, it must be reported immediately. The companies involved must be penalised,” he said while lamenting that such incidents often go unreported by the local mainstream media.
Adrian also said sudden deaths involving migrant workers were increasing over the years.
“Sudden deaths often go unreported and we tend to get informal reports about the deaths from migrant workers.
“Sometimes their respective embassies would assist these workers, and sometimes they would advise the family to bury the bodies locally because it’s too expensive to send the body back to their country.”
Earlier this year, the Nepalese Embassy produced a report which revealed that 461 of its workers died in 2016, marking a 32 per cent increase from 348 deaths in 2014.
Embassy records indicate that some nine Nepali migrant workers die every week on average in Malaysia.
It was revealed in this report, that 70 per cent of such deaths were due to sudden cardiac arrest or heart attacks while asleep.
The recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Malaysia” has attributed the cause of the high fatality among migrant workers to poor working conditions, high-level of occupational stress and lack of adequate medical care.