The Labour Department last month said it will open 30 investigation papers on Brightway after raids on two of its subsidiaries revealed various offences under the Workers’ Minimum Standards of Housing and Amenities Act (Act 446).
In a statement today, Brightway managing director G Baskaran said the company was in contact with its “major customers” and had been providing them updates on the various plans and upgrading work at its hostel facilities.
He said the company had found land to build hostels for its workers in Kajang, Klang and Port Klang and was working towards getting the relevant approvals from the government.
“Hence, press reports that a ‘stern warning’ has been issued to us is overkill.
“We will reconsider supplying our products to companies going about issuing such comments, especially when no assistance or consideration on their part was extended to assist us along the way to resolve the issues at hand,” said Baskaran.
Among Brightway’s biggest importers include American personal care giant Kimberly-Clark and Australian safety and personal protection firm Ansell, both of which have told FMT they were re-evaluating their relationship with the firm in light of the latest developments.
Kimberly-Clark produces household brands such as Kleenex, Scott and Huggies. Ansell’s biggest buyers include the National Health Service in the UK.
Human resources minister M Saravanan had described the squalid living conditions for foreign workers as akin to “modern day slavery” during the Labour Department’s raid on La Glove (M) Sdn Bhd, a Brightway subsidiary in Kajang.
The Labour Department said it found 781 workers living in two blocks of shipping containers stacked three storeys high, a statement which Baskaran said was false.
“We categorically refute the allegations of 750 migrant workers being cramped into three stacked containers. The total number of workers at the La Glove factory is only 475 and the so-called ‘containers’ is a three-storey building used as workers’ quarters,” he said.
“We do not dispute that the hostels at La Glove experienced some congestion but this has come about due to the Covid-19 situation.
“The workers were previously housed at ‘hotspots’ and they had requested that we move them to the hostel close to our factories where they are able to access all the amenities provided for their immediate use and consumption.”
Baskaran said prior to the pandemic, the La Glove workers were housed in 10 shoplots acting as hostels in areas where Covid-19 was on the rise.
He also noted that the RM1,000 fine which another subsidiary, Biopro, had to pay after a raid on its premises in Port Klang was misconstrued by the public.
After the raid on Dec 24, Ili Syazwani Mohd Mashudi, an environmental health officer at the Klang district health office, told FMT that Biopro was issued a RM1,000 compound fine for two offences under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act.
Apart from failing to ensure physical distancing in its accommodations, the company also did not disinfect and sanitise the accommodations three times a day – or record the cleaning – as required.
The company risked being handed a seven-day closure notice if it committed three or more offences under the Act, but she said an inspection of the factory found that it had complied with all relevant Covid-19 standard procedures.
Baskaran said health ministry officials “did not find any serious omissions” from the standard procedures during the raid.
However, the company was told it needed to increase the number of sanitisers and provide liquid soap in press-type dispensers. They were given until the following morning to have them installed.
“Due to this minor setback, we were served with a RM1,000 fine. The following day, six officers inspected the upgrades and gave us the green light to continue operations.
“Unfortunately, the public did not understand the real reasons for the RM1,000 compound fine.”
The multi-agency raid found workers staying in a warehouse which were partitioned into tiny rooms, each with 12 bunk beds. A worker told FMT that while only 12 people were supposed to stay in the room, it regularly held up to 18.
Another warehouse a few hundred metres away had been converted into a hostel and had an additional storey constructed above the ground floor to accommodate more beds.
Saravanan later revealed that the raid on Biopro was compromised after details of the surprise visit were leaked, leading to workers being allegedly moved to another location.
Brightway Holdings also has a factory in Bestari Jaya, Selangor, and Chemor, Perak. The group has a total of 52 lines and is capable of producing 340 million gloves per month.