KUALA LUMPUR: The Human Resources Ministry must perform a comprehensive audit on employers who hire foreign workers, says the Social Protection Contributor Advisory Association Malaysia (SPCAAM).
SPCAAM international labour advisor Callistus Antony D'Angelus said this is to determine whether such employers have complied with the law and are treating foreign workers humanely.
"The exploitation of foreign workers has a direct impact on local Malaysian workers, where the workforce as a whole gets exploited.
"Wages are depressed, working conditions do not improve, and it becomes a perennial race to the bottom.
"An overhaul of the industrial relations framework in the country is necessary, and most important to allow for the ease of representation of foreign and local workers by trade unions," he said in a statement.
Callistus stressed that corruption has always been the root cause which allowed the exploitation of foreign workers to run rampant.
"Involved are middlemen, who are modern-day slave traders, government officials and businesses. All these parties benefit monetarily and have been brazen and open about it.
"The joint efforts of the Home Minister and the Human Resources Minister to propose freezing foreign worker quota applications to the Cabinet is a necessary interim measure, but not one which will solve the problems which persist.
"What would happen when businesses start to lobby? As has been the case in the past, would the government then cave in and allow for the corrupt and exploitative status quo to resume?"
He, however, acknowledged the newly-appointed Human Resources Minister Steven Sim Chee Keong's effort in addressing the foreign worker issue.
"Unlike his past few predecessors, he seems to have knuckled down to work and not sought to engage in popularising himself.
"His appointment of the former National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) treasurer Chee Yeeh Ceeu, as a Special Officer within the ministry speaks to the efforts made to understand and deal with the problems faced by Malaysian workers and trade unions.
"For some decades now, foreign workers in Malaysia have been openly and unashamedly exploited.
"They have been treated as chattel and subject to slave-like working conditions.
"These workers are from poor countries such as Bangladesh and have little recourse due to their economic conditions," he said.