ON Sunday, Kuala Lumpur watched helplessly as new Covid-19 cases surged to 469. And 460 of which were traced to the Damalela construction site cluster.
On Monday, Top Glove Corp Bhd's workers' hostel logged 214 cases. No need for rocket science here. When social or hygiene protocols become difficult or impossible to practise, we are helping Covid-19 be the carnage it wants to be. No, do not blame foreign workers.
Were Malaysians to live under similar conditions, we, too, will contract the disease. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, doesn't discriminate. If a picture worth a thousand words is needed, yesterday's New Straits Times had one such of a foreign worker settlement in Shah Alam that spells "squalor" that many times.
If there ever was a Covid-19-friendly quarters, this is it. Disturbingly, it is replicated elsewhere in the country. Sure, not all squalid settlements can be blamed on employers. Many house the estimated four million or so illegal migrant workers. But at least the blame can be placed on the shoulders of the employers of the 2.2 million legal foreign workers who have brought them into the country.
There wasn't a legal requirement to provide decent living quarters before, but as of Sept 1, the Workers' Minimum Standards of Housing and Amenities Act 446 (Amendment) 2019 (WMSHAA) compels employers to do so. But there is more to the act than meets the eye.
The WMSHAA may have come into force, but the penalties are not scheduled to bite until Dec 1, says Dr Amalina Ahmad Tajudin, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Syariah and Law of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia. We must be having the most accommodating regulators around.
Small wonder employer compliance is low. A body of law that is all bark and postponed bite is what some of the employers are looking for. Our enforcers should have seen it coming.
Quite early on, when the 2019 act was supposed to be enforced, Malaysian employers were boisterously united in appealing for more time to comply with the newly-imposed standards. They were given three months to get the living quarters to meet the standards.
Given the presence of the pandemic in Malaysia, the government was wrong to grant them the grace period as the employers were very much aware of what is required of them when the act was being drafted. Lack of time is as lame as an excuse can get.
Now, the slip is showing. Five months after June 1, the original deadline of the act, some employers are still being irresponsible. It is time for the regulators to throw the book at them. Waiting for December is like urging Covid-19 on.
For the longer term, Malaysian employers must learn how to live with few to no foreign workers. Although foreign workers may appear cheap, they come with costs attached, anticipated and unanticipated. Covid-19 has made this blatantly clear. Many are without medical benefits. Close to none can afford the high cost of medical insurance.
Once they are down with Covid-19, they are left to fend for themselves. If employers are willing to give their legal obligation a pass, they will only be too willing to do the same to the moral obligation owed to their fallen workers.
We have seen many foreign workers who were killed in workplace accidents being sent home in body bags and nothing else. Employers who care so little for their workers do not deserve them.