Andy Hall alleged that the sum is being paid by the Nepalis to cover the extortionate fees charged by numerous recruitment intermediaries, including Malaysian security agents and Nepali manpower agents and brokers, who will help get these Nepalis employed in Malaysia in the coming weeks and months.
These costs must be paid upfront in Nepal for the workers to earn a shot at moving to Malaysia to land these jobs, which are currently being advertised, said Hall, who spoke to Nepali agents as well as subagents who were recruiting workers, and those who were interested in the jobs.
Malaysia currently allows Nepalis to be recruited as security guards in the country.
“These vulnerable workers are paying all the recruitment fees and costs themselves in Nepal, including the agents’ fees, flight tickets, medical testing costs, and visa and insurance charges,” he told FMT.
According to a now expired MoU on recruitment of workers signed between the governments of Malaysia and Nepal in 2018, most of these recruitment costs, including any recruitment intermediary’s fees, should be covered by Malaysian employers and not by the workers.
In February, a Nepali news portal reported that Malaysia has been “cold-shouldering” Nepal’s proposal to renew the MoU. Quoting officials from Nepal’s labour, employment and social security ministry, HimalPress reported that “Malaysia has shown little interest in revisiting the MoU due to the existing syndicate in the medical check-up sector for migrant workers”.
Hall said: “The situation has become one where Malaysian security agents are paid large sums of illicit money or bribes collected in Nepal and transferred to Malaysia to take Nepali workers from certain Nepali manpower agents competing to get Malaysian security guard demands, rather than the other way around, where the security agency should be paying costs to recruit these workers themselves.”:
He said if Nepali workers paid between RM3,800 and RM5,000 in the past to work in the Malaysian security sector, they will now have to cough up between RM8,000 and RM10,000.
The increase in recruitment cost for Nepali security guards is another sign that the Malaysian foreign worker recruitment market is out of control, Hall said.
This would lead to the creation of a new batch of “modern slaves”, referring to the enormous debt these migrants would incur that makes them vulnerable to exploitation.
As it stands, he said, Nepali security guards are already vulnerable to systematic abuse from exploitative recruitment intermediaries, security guard agencies, and sometimes, even law enforcement officials and the public.
“Many are overworked and underpaid. Their freedom of movement is limited through document confiscation and an inability to resign, and they are manipulated and poorly housed.
“Urgent attention needs to be placed on the increasingly abusive and extortionate recruitment of these vulnerable individuals, and the awful conditions in which they work and live,” he said.
He urged the Malaysian and Nepali governments, the Nepali embassy in Malaysia, as well as the security industry and the international community to address this “increasingly dire situation”.