KUALA LUMPUR: Desperate for work after the Covid-19 pandemic left them jobless, hundreds of Malaysians pounced on offers of high-paying jobs abroad when borders reopened.
They were in for an ugly surprise.
They soon found out they had become victims of job scams and, with their travel documents taken away, are now stranded in several Indochinese countries.
Police said initial investigations showed the scams are run by human trafficking syndicates in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Bukit Aman CID director Comm Datuk Seri Abd Jalil Hassan (pic) told The Star that 115 Malaysians were still stranded in these countries, desperate to return home.
Statistics from the federal police showed as at May 23, 100 men and 15 women aged between 17 and 41, were still stuck in various countries including Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.
“We have received a total of 110 police reports on Malaysians stranded abroad after being victims of job scams.
“We believe the victims have been stranded there for at least six months. We are actively pursuing all cases to assist the victims,” he added.
Police reports were lodged by the victims’ families after they managed to call home, he said.
“In most cases, the victims managed to inform their family members of their predicament.
“We believe the number of police reports increased after the recent successful rescue of Malaysians abroad, with such cases being highlighted in the media,” he added.
Last month, the Malaysian Embassy in Cambodia said it had rescued more than 60 Malaysians coerced into working for scam call centres over the past few years.
On April 6, 16 Malaysians held captive in Sihanoukville on the south coast of Cambodia were also rescued.
The victims claimed they were duped by offers of jobs as customer service representatives with lucrative salaries for a Cambodian company.
Once in Cambodia, their personal documents were seized and their movements restricted.
Since the reopening of the country’s borders, more dubious job offers were being uploaded on social media, Comm Abd Jalil said.
“Some people are desperate due to a lack of jobs because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Among the main factors that enticed victims to such job scams are lucrative salary offers and benefits.
“We believe the convenience of finding a job overseas is also a factor that influenced the victims’ decisions,” he added.
Comm Abd Jallil said initial investigations showed the syndicates were forcing these Malaysians into working in scams and gambling dens.
“We are building more intelligence on the human trafficking syndicates to effectively clamp down on such job scams.
“We are working hard with the Interpol and Aseanapol to track down and rescue victims.
“We are also collaborating with the Foreign Ministry to expedite efforts in rescuing the victims overseas,” he added.
He also appealed for more awareness to prevent others from falling victims.
“We are working with government agencies and NGOs especially the MCA Public Services and Complaints Department on creating more awareness on such job scams.
“We are focusing on the importance of being careful when considering jobs offered overseas via social media,” he said.
Comm Abd Jalil advised the public to know and adhere to local laws and regulations when accepting jobs overseas.
“Before accepting any job offers, do a thorough background check on the prospective employer or company,” he said.
Comm Abd Jalil added that the police welcome information on syndicates that duped Malaysians and forced them to conduct illegal activities overseas.
“Those with information can contact the nearest police station,” he said.
Dirty hands are the sign of honest, though not necessarily clean, work and labor and thus the income from such work is what we could call clean money. .
A person working with his or her hands, generally, has signs of this ingrained in skin of their hands and it is those people that we should value more than those who have highly manicured hands, whether female or male, who thus, more than likely, have never done an honest day's work.
But society values the latter more than the former, unfortunately, and we can see where that has led us, I am sure. Not only does society value the clean hands, as in no physical dirt on them, but also those that make vast sums of money, which those that do an honest day's work getting their hands dirty, do not.
The worker is the backbone of society for without him or her nothing would get produced, no streets cleaned, no parks and public spaces maintained, no food produced and no wood. The majority of office staff, civil servants, bankers and such like we could well do without, but we cannot do without the worker, the farmer and the forester. Neither, I know, can we do without doctors and nurses, and the cleaners in hospitals. Nor without the carers for the elderly and the sick. But most of those would fall under the term of worker anyway and thus are covered.
The disgrace is that those who toil hard with their hands and do the real work are those that get the lowest share in remuneration from their labors while those who do not do a single stroke of work are the ones who get all the rewards, which really are not due to them.
There are schools, nowadays, and I guess they have always been, who teach the kids that they should not aspire to the “low” jobs of working with their hands with terms such as “you are better than that”, or “we”, referring in that case to the entire school, “we are better than that”. I wonder what they think would happen if there would be not refuse workers, no street cleaners, and such like. For one they would be drowning in their own garbage that they create on a daily basis, not to think about the other things that would not happen would those workers not be there.
The Tanjong Pagar container terminal in Singapore.
Shock contraction in quarterly GDP raises risk of job losses
Officials already grappling with aging, productivity threats
Singapore’s economic data have gone from bad to worse this month.
Exports slumped to their second-worst rate since the global financial
crisis, the purchasing managers index slipped into contraction for the
first time since 2016, and the economy shrank the most in almost seven
years in the second quarter.
After spending much of early 2019 enjoying relative resilience, a recession
is now looming. That’s a warning shot for regional and global
economies, since Singapore’s heavy reliance on trade makes it somewhat
of a bellwether for the rest of Asia.
The severity of the slump may be down to trade tensions and a
global slowdown, but Singapore has been grappling with longstanding
economic threats that have been slowly eroding the city state’s growth
potential: rapid aging, labor market shrinkage, and sluggish productivity among them. Those risks will become more acute for policy makers now.
“Any
undue turbulence or prolonged stresses from the trade war are only
going to compound the challenges of all the other issues --
productivity, demographics, anything else,” said Vishnu Varathan, head
of economics & strategy at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in Singapore. “External
demand concerns will be at the top of the list for now, because if you
don’t get that one right it’s that much more difficult to solve
everything else.”
Singapore remains one of the most export-reliant
economies in the world, with trade equivalent to 326% of gross domestic
product, according to World Bank data. That puts the city state at the
center of the storm stirred up by its top two trading partners sparring
over tariffs.
The shock GDP figures earlier this month prompted some analysts to downgrade
their Singapore forecasts for the year to below 1%. The government is
set to revisit its own 1.5%-2.5% range next month, but for now, it’s remaining calm, seeing no recession for the full year.
What Bloomberg’s Economists Say...
“Barring
a swift rapprochement in U.S.-China trade relations, our forecast for a
0.2% year-on-year contraction in Singapore in 2019 remains on course.
The government has ample firepower to cushion the blow, but it may not be enough to avoid a recession.”
-Tamara Henderson, Asean economist
The slump is largely contained so far to manufacturing, which makes up about a fifth
of the economy, but could soon spread to other sectors such as retail
and financial services. That increases the risk of job losses at a time
when businesses like International Business Machines Corp. are already laying off workers and banks such as Nomura Holdings Inc. cut staff.
The number of retrenched
workers in Singapore rose to the highest in more than a year in the
first quarter, though the unemployment rate has remained fairly steady
at 2.2% amid a recovery in construction.
“The labor market looks
to be on two tracks at the moment -- there’s a weak market in the
manufacturing sector but a steady one in the services sector,” said
Shaun Roache, chief Asia-Pacific economist at S&P Global Ratings in
Singapore. “High-frequency indicators including industrial production
and trade suggest that the environment will remain challenging in
manufacturing for the year.”
While those cyclical headwinds buffer the outlook, policy makers are also grappling with structural impediments to growth.
An employee clears tables at a food center in Singapore.
Faced
with a rapidly aging population, the government has been on an
aggressive campaign to re-skill its labor force and prepare workers for a
postponed retirement.
The median age is set to rise to 46.8 years in 2030 from 39.7 in 2015,
faster than the other top economies in Southeast Asia as well as the
world as a whole, according to United Nations projections.
Tied to its rapid aging is Singapore’s productivity conundrum.
As
the labor pool shrinks and gets older, the city state’s answer to the
productivity challenge has been to automate and digitize. With an
ambition to become a “Smart Nation,”
the government has poured money and energy into digitization projects
of all kinds, from helping seniors fine-tune smartphone skills at
digital clinics to attracting financial technology giants to set up shop and test their ideas.
It’s
that technological advancement, along with its world-beating
infrastructure and efficiency, that continues to make Singapore attractive to
businesses like Dyson Ltd., the U.K. manufacturer that picked the city
state for its location to build its first electric cars. It’s also a
reason why officials are confident Singapore can meet its foreign investment targets for this year.
“They’re saying the right thing, doing the right thing,” said
Edward Lee, chief economist for South and Southeast Asia at Standard
Chartered Plc in Singapore, who has penciled in 1% growth for 2019.
“Retraining, ongoing structural reforms on the labor side -- those are
the right things.”
The promise of lucrative salaries are luring many Malaysians abroad but most are scams leaving these job seekers cheated and in need of rescuing.
The promise of lucrative salaries are luring many Malaysians abroad but most are scams leaving these job seekers cheated and in need of rescuing.
IT is ironic that at the same time there is an ongoing crackdown on illegal immigrants in the country, Malaysians are being detained in countries like Cambodia, South Korea and even Liberia.
These detentions have increased in frequency to the extent that Wisma Putra has issued a warning to “remind all Malaysians to be cautious of opportunities offered in foreign countries, and always verify the prospective employers”.
It used to be that foreigners (read: South Asians and South-East Asians) were drawn to Malaysia’s booming property and service sectors for better paying jobs.
They still are. On Monday, as part of operations codenamed Ops Mega 3.0, some 73 illegal immigrants, from Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, were held by the police under the Immigration Act. These foreigners were working at the Selangor wholesale market without proper work documents.
But how times have changed. The roles appear to be reversed, the Malaysians that have been detained overseas were for exactly similar offences – no proper work documents.
This time last year, The Star’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal mStar Online revealed that there was an estimated 5,000 Malaysians working and staying illegally in South Korea. The less fortunate ones were forced to live like refugees, always on the run from the authorities.
These Malaysians were lured by job advertisements that claimed they could earn a lucrative living in the land of K-pop. They paid recruitment agents thousands of ringgit in fees and entered South Korea with tourist visas.
Some of these Malaysians interviewed by mStar spoke about the hardships they faced including poor living conditions, tough working environment and employers holding back their salaries.
The Korean police and its justice ministry have begun cracking down on these illegals, starting from last month. Those without proper documentation will be immediately deported.
But Malaysians never learn. Two recent cases highlight the need for employees to be more vigilant and for the authorities to crack down on fly-by-night recruitment agents.
First, the case of the 47 Sarawakians who were detained in Cambodia since Dec 11 last year on charges of cheating and initiating and carrying out illegal online gambling activities.
It was reported that the Malaysians were promised jobs with lucrative salaries up to US$1,500 (RM6,100), and only found out that it was a scam when they arrived in Cambodia.
Their plight was highlighted in local media, and Wisma Putra, other leaders and representatives from Sarawak flew to Cambodia to secure their release. They were finally released on Feb 15.
The second recent case also involved Sarawakians. Eight of them were left stranded in Monrovia, Liberia, since Feb 4 after being offered logging jobs with wages up to RM9,000.
They were left stranded in the African nation without any money, and managed to survive because they were given rice by Malaysians working with Sime Darby in Liberia.
“If not for the rice, we would definitely be dead,” said Aji Surau, 39, after arriving at KL International Airport on March 4, one month after their ordeal.
He said they were abandoned in a house with no water and electricity and even resorted to eating papaya leaves to survive.
All these cases have one thing in common – dodgy job syndicates.
These unscrupulous agents rake in thousands of ringgit by promising the world to gullible locals.
“I want to advise Malaysians to be cautious when getting job offers overseas because this is not the first such incident.
“Check with the authorities concerned, especially the Malaysian representatives, whether the company offering the job is legitimate or not,” Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told reporters after the Liberian detainees were released.
The Cambodia and Liberia incidences appear to be genuine cases of people who were promised legitimate work contracts. But for every genuine case, there are five others who play the “victim” card.
In some countries where Malaysians are caught working illegally, they claimed that they were lured there with guarantees of proper employment with legal documentation. But the reality is that these people went overseas on tourist visas with the sole intention of getting a job, by whatever means.
Did you know that Malaysians are the worst visa abusers when it comes to overstaying in Australia?
According to a 2018 report from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, there were 62,000 people overstaying their visas and living illegally in Australia, with Malaysians making up the largest number. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, 10,000 Malaysians had overstayed!
As a result of this blatant abuse of tourist visas, the Australian authorities have made it harder for Malaysians to enter the country.
Australian-based news site news.com.au quoted a source from the Malaysian mission in Australia as saying that more Malaysians are being turned away at the airports, despite having the necessary visas approved before departure.
These visa scams are not only giving us a bad name, but also making it more difficult for genuine Malaysian tourists to visit Australia.
The latest “tourist” scam is via social media where syndicates are luring people to become drug mules by offering them cash and opportunities to go for tours abroad. But beware, if you’re caught deportation is the least of your problems. A stiff jail sentence or even the death penalty awaits.
Brian Martin, executive editor of The Star, would like to come
clean. He has vested interest in the proposed assessment rate hike since
he’s a resident of Kuala Lumpur.
Don’t get conned, Malaysians warned
Labour Dept: Only use services of licensed private recruitment companies
From “interviews” in coffeeshops to being persuaded to work in war-torn countries with lucrative salaries, Malaysians are being increasingly conned into travelling to work overseas, only to run into trouble.
This has prompted the Labour Department to advise those wishing to work overseas to only use the services of licensed private recruitment companies.
Seeking the services of licensed private job agencies under the Labour Department as provided in the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) would help one avoid being conned or exploited by unscrupulous agents or employers overseas, it said.
“There’s a possibility that high salaries offered has become a pull factor in enticing Malaysians to work overseas.
“The Labour Department is always carrying out enforcement activities under the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) to monitor the activities of illegitimate agencies and agents,” it said in response to questions by The Star.
The Labour Department, which is under the Human Resources Ministry, was responding to queries about the increasing media reports highlighting Malaysians being conned in overseas jobs.
While the Labour Department said it did not have any records on the numbers of overseas job scam cases affecting Malaysians, it encourages those with information on such cases to come forward.
“We have not received reports on job scams. However, victims can file a report with the Labour Department, including in Sabah and Sarawak for any job scams issues so that we can act accordingly,” it said.
MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong said many of the job scam victims he encountered were enticed to work in African or Middle Eastern countries.
“Many of these countries are war-torn and so these ‘employment agents’ would tell the victims there is a lot of construction work to rebuild the country.
“These victims are mostly semi-skilled or unskilled workers who are attracted to the salaries which are supposedly from RM6,000 to RM10,000 a month,” he said.
However, he said, these victims were then cheated out of their salaries and left with little to no protection in a foreign country.
To stop these scams from occurring, he urged those interested to find work to carry out background checks on the company.
“You must make sure that there is an incorporated company so if anything happened to you, there is a company we could look for,” he said.
He also advised people to be wary if the salary offered is too good to be true, or if the job interview doesn’t take place in the company’s office.
“There are some ‘interviews’ which are even being conducted in coffeeshops,” said Chong.
He said he noticed more of such cases in recent years, especially as many Malaysians want to go overseas to eke out a livelihood.
Last December, 47 Malaysians were detained in Cambodia for being involved in illegal online gambling activities.
It was reported that they were offered jobs with lucrative salaries but had only found out that it was a scam when they arrived in Cambodia.
In February, eight Sarawakians were stranded in Liberia after allegedly being cheated by an employment syndicate.
The Malaysian Employers Federation called for a dedicated government agency to help protect the welfare of Malaysians who go overseas to work.
Its executive director Datuk Shamsuddin Bardan said this was to prevent them from being exploited and falling prey to illegal job syndicates.
“We have more than one million Malaysians working overseas but we have no proper body to monitor their affairs,” he said yesterday.
He noted that the Filippine government would ensure that their citizens who are sent overseas to work are properly trained and that they are employed by a legitimate company.
“The Filipino government would ensure that there is a proper document signed between the employer and agent, and if anything happens to the worker, the agent will be held responsible.
“We should emulate the Philippines to help our workers who aspire to work overseas,” he said.
However, he said the grim reality was that many Malaysian workers were enticed to work overseas because of the attractive pay, even if the details surrounding the employment were unclear.
“Employees are attracted to the higher wages offered in those countries, where the income promised triple or even quadruple what they are earning in Malaysia – and most of these jobs do not require high level of skills such as picking fruit.
“A difficult economic situation in Malaysia with the rising costs of living also contribute to the problem.
“We must re-look at our employment practices, how we remunerate our employees and develop our talent,” he said.
Malaysian Trades Union Congress secretary-general J. Solomon agreed that better policies and enforcement were needed to monitor the outflow of Malaysian workers to other countries.
“The authorities and their relevant agencies need to know where Malaysian workers are going when they travel overseas,” he said.
He said tighter enforcement was especially needed as more false job advertisements were disseminated easily on various social media platforms.
“It is high time the Cabinet review and encourage companies to comply with minimum wage level,” he said.
The low wages in Malaysia and the stigma of 3D (dirty, dangerous and difficult) jobs cause Malaysians to desperately seek employment outside the country, he added.
“These factors are causing Malaysians to go elsewhere to find alternative sources of income,” he said.
Bureaucratic staying power: While boy band BTS may be going places (no, that Grammy award is not theirs), a government survey shows that one in four middle-school students in South Korea dream of one day becoming not K-pop star or the next Steve Jobs, but that 'adjussi' in the civil service - Reuters
Desire for stability: Many South Koreans worry
far more about jobs and the economy than they do about the nuclear
threat from North Korea, like this jobseeker at a jobs fair in Seoul
last November. — AFP
South Korean Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki, third from left, makes
remarks at a meeting on reviving the economy at the government complex
in Seoul on Jan. 9, 2019. (YONHAP / EPA-EFE/REX)
In a tough market, young South Koreans dream for the security of government jobs instead of tech innovation and K-pop success.
For more than three years, Kim Ju-hee has been studying full time for an exam that feels like her only shot at a good life in South Korea.
She’s lost count of how many times she’s taken the nation’s civil service exam and failed — though she knows it’s been at least 10. The 26-year-old is not sure what she’ll do if she fails again, so she figures that spending more than eight hours a day studying for her next try, on April 6, makes sense.
Kim hopes to become a government tax clerk, which offers a starting salary of about $17,000, and work for the government until retirement.
“There just aren’t other good jobs,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Seoul, where she lives with her parents.
The most sought-after careers among teenagers and young adults in South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, are government jobs they can count on to get them to their golden years, not jobs innovating and helping companies grow in the private sector.
Analysts say it’s a symptom of the nation’s slowing economic growth and competition from China in export-driven industries that young South Koreans, about a fifth of the 51 million population, are flocking to what they consider risk-free government jobs not vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the economy. The situation is particularly concerning because it was private companies in sectors like electronics, autos and shipbuilding that fueled South Korea’s rapid growth from one of the world’s poorest nations in the 1960s into an economic powerhouse, analysts say.
Many young people in South Korea say they don’t expect nongovernment job prospects to improve anytime soon despite a host of measures announced by South Korean President Moon Jae-in nearly a year ago to boost employment, including government stipends to companies.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, puts on a safety helmet during his
tour of a hydrogen plant in Ulsan, South Korea. Critics have pointed to
the lackluster economy to say the president should be focusing on
bettering South Korean lives, engaging with North Korea. (YONHAP /
EPA-EFE / REX)
Unemployment among those ages 15 to 29 reached 11.6% last spring — a level Moon called catastrophic, compared with a jobless rate that hovered between 3% and 4% for the rest of the country’s workforce. Taking into account young adults who are working part-time jobs or studying for an employment exam like Kim, nearly 1 in 4 are out of a job. By comparison, in the U.S., unemployment among those ages 15 to 24 fluctuated between 8% and 9% in 2018. South Korea uses a different age bracket to calculate its youth unemployment because of mandatory two-year military service.
The desire for stability and security starts so young that 1 in 4 middle school students say they dream of one day becoming not a K-pop star or the next Steve Jobs, but a public sector bureaucrat, according to a government survey from 2017.
Many South Koreans worry far more about jobs and the economy than they do about the nuclear threat from North Korea. Conservatives in South Korea who are critical of Moon’s efforts at detente with North Korea point to the economy, saying his focus should be on bettering lives in South Korea, not on engaging with the North.
Competition for South Korea’s 1.07 million government jobs is fierce. In one round of exams Kim took last year, more than 200,000 people applied, and the 4,953 highest-scoring candidates were hired for open positions — an acceptance rate of 2.4%. By comparison, Harvard’s 2018 acceptance rate was 4.59%.
Kim Y.H., 22, who is about to graduate from college in February with a degree in Japanese, recently began studying for a civil service exam to become a customs agent. She said the popularity of public sector jobs was a sign that her generation is pessimistic about South Korea’s economic outlook.
“The country won’t guarantee your future, even if you’re a college graduate,” she said. “So of course we want to go with the most stable path that’s out there.”
There isn’t the expectation that you’ll grow or get good treatment in the private sector. People choose stability over risk or challenge.
Joo Won, economist
Share quote & link
One research report published last year estimated that as many as half a million South Koreans were studying for civil service exams full time instead of working. In 2017, the Hyundai Research Institute estimated that the economic cost from the lost work potential of so many young people spending years studying to get government jobs, rather than joining the private workforce, was more than $15 billion.
Moon’s administration has tried to encourage employment among young adults by paying small and medium-sized businesses to hire them, and by offering government-matched savings programs for young workers. He has also pledged to add 174,000 government jobs by 2022 to meet the heightened demand.
Some analysts, however, say the administration’s stopgap measures won’t do much to fix the problems underlying the push for government jobs.
“There isn’t the expectation that you’ll grow or get good treatment in the private sector. People choose stability over risk or challenge,” said Joo Won, one of the authors of the Hyundai study. “There are only so many public sector jobs the government can create. It won’t fix the situation.”
Many analysts point to the widening gap between the behemoth family-owned conglomerates that dominate the South Korean economy, such as Samsung and LG, and other companies. Large corporations including the chaebol, as they are known, accounted for about half of the revenue in South Korea in 2017 but provided only 20% of the jobs in the country, according to the most recent figures available from the government. And while their share of the economy grew, the number of jobs they offered dropped, because of consolidation and downsizing within the corporations amid the economic slowdown.
A Samsung flag and South Korean flag outside the Samsung building in Seoul in January. Analysts say part of problem for young job seekers in South Korea is the widening gap between the quality of jobs at family-owned conglomerates like Samsung and the rest of the players. (Jung Yeon-je / AFP/Getty Images)
That polarisation means stark disparity in
income and working conditions between those employed by the
conglomerates and those employed elsewhere – with starting salaries at
large corporations averaging about US$36,000 (RM 146,370), compared with
approximately US$24,000 (RM97,580) at smaller companies – fuelling
intense competition for a decreasing number of coveted jobs.
“The world was harsher than I thought,” she said.
“If you work for a small or medium-sized company, you become a second-class citizen” with a fraction of the income, long hours and poor benefits, said Kwon Soon-won, a business professor at Sookmyung University in Seoul.
Those without the impressive resumes increasingly needed for jobs at the top companies — internships, perfect grades, proficiency in a foreign language or three — are turning to civil service exams.
Applicants to civil service exams tripled from 1995 to 2016, according to a report by the Seoul Youth Guarantee Center. One online bookseller said it saw a 73.5% increase in sales of civil service exam prep books in 2016 compared with the previous year.
Kwon said South Korea’s high education level is part of the problem — although 70% of those ages 24 to 35 have college degrees, the economy hasn’t kept pace by creating enough quality jobs to meet the increased expectations of those graduates.
Kim Eun-ji, 26, certainly feels that way. With an economics degree from Chung-Ang University, a top-10 college in Seoul, she applied to more than 50 jobs at a wide range of companies big and small but never got past first-round interviews.
“If I think about how many people there are like me in the country, it just feels pointless,” she said, leaving an employment center in Seoul.
She has been studying for a government-issued computerized accounting license to better her employment prospects. Among her friends who graduated around the same time she did in early 2016, only about half are employed full time, Kim said.
Her roommate, who keeps deferring her college graduation, has been making a modest but steady income publishing romance novels online, which strikes her as a more viable option at a steady income than traditional employment.
As a kid, Kim Ju-hee had dreamed of becoming a singer or a teacher. But as an eighth-grader, hearing how hard it was to get a stable job, she set her sights on becoming a bureaucrat.
She’s gotten close to giving up, occasionally applying to other jobs or working part time here and there. But she worries that if she gives up, she’ll have spent years of her life in vain because none of what she studied for the exam will be useful for other jobs.
Victoria
Kim reports from Seoul, South Korea, for the Los Angeles Times. Since
joining the paper in 2007, she has covered the state and federal courts
and the Korean community in Los Angeles. Her work has included
investigations on the cover-up of the sex abuse scandal in the Los
Angeles Archdiocese, killing of unarmed suspects by the Inglewood
police, underpaid workers in the garment district and unaccredited law
schools in California. She has previously written for the Associated
Press in South Korea and West Africa, as well as the Financial Times in
New York. Victoria was raised in Seoul and graduated from Harvard
University.
A tough life: Malaysians seen working at a vegetable farm near Seoul.
https://richard-rightways.blogspot.my/
SEOUL: An estimated 5,000 Malaysians are working and staying illegally in South Korea, with the less fortunate ones forced to live like refugees and always on the run from the authorities.
Lured by job advertisements that claimed they could make money hand over fist in the land of K-pop and Descendants of the Sun, they paid recruitment agents thousands of ringgit in fees and entered the country on tourist visas.
Unfortunately, many of them have been left in dire straits after finding out that reality did not match up with the promises.
Star Media Group’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal mStar Online sent a team to South Korea to look into their plight and found many of these Malaysians stranded and destitute.
These 5,000, based on figures that volunteer aid workers pieced together from Malaysians and recruitment agents, are part of an estimated 251,000 illegal foreign workers in the country as reported by The Korea Herald.
Their problems, first highlighted by the portal in a series of special reports in association with The Korea Herald in January, ranged from suffering permanent disability after workplace accidents to being left broke and homeless when they were fired by their employers.
Among the locations the team visited were Itaewon in the central region and Daeso and Muguk in Eumseoung district, about 80km from Seoul.
A Malaysian who wanted to be known only as Farhan said he and two of his friends have been homeless for more than two months since they were fired without pay after working at a seaweed processing company for just one week.
“I was fired because I came down with fever a week after starting work. We have to rely on our friends for food,” he said, adding that sometimes they only had biscuits to eat.
The 24-year-old said that on weekends, they would sleep at the Seoul Central Mosque, while on weekdays, they would stay at a friend’s house.
Visiting the mosque, the mStar Online team found several bags in the corridors, believed to belong to the foreign workers who sleep there.
Another Malaysian, who did not want to be named, said she had to live in one house with 18 others.
The woman, who works on an onion and sweet potato farm, said the house is so overcrowded that some of them have to sleep in front of the toilet or on the kitchen floor.
She and her housemates said there had been cases of Malaysians being physically abused if they did not work fast enough.
Their story was echoed by others the team interviewed, as well as those who came forward in the earlier reports in January, and because of their illegal status, they are often exploited, made to work long hours without rest and barred from talking to their colleagues.
The risk of accidents is also great because they are seldom given briefings or safety equipment and protective gear.
After such hardship, their labour sometimes even goes unrewarded because of employers who, taking advantage of their workers’ illegal status, hold back their pay in the belief that they would not dare report it to the authorities.
As a result, many suffer in silence for fear of being detained by the authorities, and are ignorant of their rights as workers.
Winter in South Korea will come to an end later this month. Without money, shelter or a way home, these stranded Malaysians can only wait it out, and hope for new job opportunities that will be available in the spring.
SEOUL: The 5,000 Malaysians working and staying illegally in South Korea may be grouped into six categories, based on the findings of the mStar Online team that visited South Korea and spoke to some of those affected.
• The lucky ones
These are the “successful” ones who entered the country on tourist visas, have the funds to return home or travel to other countries after these visas expire. They then return to South Korea on new tourist visas and take up jobs here again.
Those in this category are considered fortunate because they have responsible employers who pay them as promised. They have also managed to evade the authorities.
• Those who overstay
There are also Malaysians who took the risk of overstaying. They are either working or waiting for other job opportunities. They can get by as long as they are not caught or face workplace issues such as accidents or exploitation by their employers.
Generally, it can be said that those who belong to the first two groups managed to realise their dream, have a place to stay, and are living comfortably in a foreign land.
• The unemployed and homeless
On the other hand, there are those who have been made homeless and forced to sleep in mosques or rely on the kindness of friends.
Their situation is caused by several factors: they may have been cheated by recruitment agents, had their salaries withheld, or had their contracts terminated, leaving them with nowhere to live and no funds to return to Malaysia.
• Waiting for spring
Job opportunities drop considerably during winter. Those without work are forced to endure the cold and wait for spring, which brings more job openings with it.
Those who have the money would not find the winter months a problem, but the unemployed have to depend on others for food and shelter.
• Accident victims
There are also those who overstay because of workplace accidents. They have to remain behind while waiting for their cases to be heard at the Labour Office so that they can claim compensation from their employers.
• Those on medical visas
Some of those hurt in workplace accidents are fortunate enough to be granted medical visas by the authorities, enabling them to stay in South Korea until their treatment is completed.
The specific reasons for not returning home vary from one individual to the next. Some may be victims of circumstance, while others are just determined to achieve their goals and earn as much as they can before coming back.
And with each new job opportunity that comes along, a new set of risks and hazards arises.
Malaysians lured by higher pay
Getting the story: Nadia speaking to an agent about the risks of illegal employment in South Korea.
PETALING JAYA: The Malaysians who brave the perils of working and staying illegally in South Korea do so because of monthly salaries advertised in the range of RM6,000 to RM12,000.
In fact, recruitment agents say, they choose to go even after being told of the risks involved.
It is estimated that as many as 5,000 Malaysians have gone there since 2016, to work in factories producing kimchi, cosmetics, calendars, furniture, auto spare parts and aluminium, among other items.
When the big pay they expected does not materialise, usually because of workplace accidents or exploitation by unscrupulous employers, they often find themselves homeless and broke.
An mStar Online team probing their plight spoke to one agent who said about 800 Malaysians had used his services last year alone.
The agent, who asked to be known only as Nasir, said he charged each customer RM2,800.
The amount covers securing the job, a return air ticket and a South Korean job agency’s fees.
According to The Korea Herald, there are about 251,000 illegal workers from various countries working in South Korea.
This group is highly exposed to occupational hazards and is at risk of being duped or exploited by employers because of their immigration status.
Local agents as well as aid volunteers in Seoul said Malaysians made up about 5,000 of the overall figure.
Taufik, another agent, said he knew of about 20 others who were in the same line.
“I personally handled trips for almost 100 Malaysians to South Korea since 2016,” he added.
He said not all agents were responsible enough to inform their clients of the risks.
Taufik said he was honest in his dealings and made sure those who used his services were fully aware of the risks they faced as illegals working in South Korea.
However, he was surprised to see that all these potential problems did not deter a single one of his clients from going to South Korea, which reportedly had the highest household income in Asia.
“There are agents who do not give clear information, but I tell my customers about the real situation and ask them to think carefully before going.
“Among the most important things they must have is a strong spirit.
“This is just my side job. I have my own business. I don’t depend on their money,” he told mStar Online.
Taufik claimed he only pocketed RM500 to RM600 of the RM2,500 fee he charged clients.
Based on surveys and from talking to agents and their clients, the team learned that an agent stood to make up to RM15,000 for every batch of recruits – ranging from 10 to 30 per group – sent to South Korea.
Another agent, Azhar, said it was easy to get through immigration checks there as the job seekers posed as tourists.
To prove they were just visiting, Azhar said he would provide them with fake return tickets to show to South Korean immigration officials.
His package, priced at RM2,500, includes one night’s accommodation, a prepaid T-Money payment card, job arrangement charges and transport to the workplace.
The former flight attendant used a tourist visa to enter the country and work illegally in a steel factory, where she met with the accident. Sally (not ... “I received treatment, monthly expenditure and some compensation, but only after I got help from a Malaysian activist who fights for the rights of workers like us.
Demanding conditions: Workers labouring at a
construction site in Seoul. Malaysians, using tourist visas to work as
illegal labourers, take up tough jobs in the manufacturing, construction
and plantation sectors in South Korea. — AP
Statistics from the federal police showed as at May 23, 100 men and 15 women aged between 17 and 41, were still stuck in various countries including Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.
“We have received a total of 110 police reports on Malaysians stranded abroad after being victims of job scams.
“We believe the victims have been stranded there for at least six months. We are actively pursuing all cases to assist the victims,” he added.
Police reports were lodged by the victims’ families after they managed to call home, he said.
“In most cases, the victims managed to inform their family members of their predicament.
“We believe the number of police reports increased after the recent successful rescue of Malaysians abroad, with such cases being highlighted in the media,” he added.
Last month, the Malaysian Embassy in Cambodia said it had rescued more than 60 Malaysians coerced into working for scam call centres over the past few years.
On April 6, 16 Malaysians held captive in Sihanoukville on the south coast of Cambodia were also rescued.
The victims claimed they were duped by offers of jobs as customer service representatives with lucrative salaries for a Cambodian company.
Once in Cambodia, their personal documents were seized and their movements restricted.
Since the reopening of the country’s borders, more dubious job offers were being uploaded on social media, Comm Abd Jalil said.
“Some people are desperate due to a lack of jobs because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Among the main factors that enticed victims to such job scams are lucrative salary offers and benefits.
“We believe the convenience of finding a job overseas is also a factor that influenced the victims’ decisions,” he added.
Comm Abd Jallil said initial investigations showed the syndicates were forcing these Malaysians into working in scams and gambling dens.
“We are building more intelligence on the human trafficking syndicates to effectively clamp down on such job scams.
“We are working hard with the Interpol and Aseanapol to track down and rescue victims.
“We are also collaborating with the Foreign Ministry to expedite efforts in rescuing the victims overseas,” he added.
He also appealed for more awareness to prevent others from falling victims.
“We are working with government agencies and NGOs especially the MCA Public Services and Complaints Department on creating more awareness on such job scams.
“We are focusing on the importance of being careful when considering jobs offered overseas via social media,” he said.
Comm Abd Jalil advised the public to know and adhere to local laws and regulations when accepting jobs overseas.
“Before accepting any job offers, do a thorough background check on the prospective employer or company,” he said.
Comm Abd Jalil added that the police welcome information on syndicates that duped Malaysians and forced them to conduct illegal activities overseas.
