MALAYSIA, we are being told by the United States State Department, is a Tier 3 country when it comes to human trafficking. Or as the Americans like to call it, people trafficking. Understandably, Malaysia isn't happy.
Imagine being lumped together in the same category as Myanmar, the notorious neighbour of ours to the north. Or even in the same basket as strife-ravaged South Sudan, which turned just 11 on July 9. We should do better.
We can do one of two things. Either rave and rage about it or find ways to move up the table to, with hope, Tier 1. We suggest the latter. Not because the ranking is done by the most powerful nation on Earth, but because people trafficking goes against the grain of being human.
True, double standards aren't foreign to Washington. The message by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the 2022 report is a case in point. There, he goes on at length on the "unprecedented humanitarian crisis" faced by the Ukrainians. We grant that. No question about it. But so are the Palestinians, Afghans, Syrians, Yemenis and Ethiopians facing similar, if not, worse humanitarian crises. Washington's double standards won't have room for them.
Be that as it may, we must move forward in spite of the American worldview and its prejudices. Because Malaysia must want to be a nation with a human touch. Not because Washington will make trading with the US and its allies difficult, which it will do.
Or make financing expensive or even impossible, which, again, the US will do.
Here is how Malaysia can move up the ladder. As Datuk Seri Akhbar Satar, president of the Malaysian Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, points out, we did it before in 2017 when we moved from the Tier 2 watch list to Tier 2 with the government boosting investigations, prosecutions and obtaining convictions.
Now we may need to do more of these. Akhbar's suggestion is for the government to form a task force made of enforcement agencies, the Human Resources Ministry and the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.
This is one way to meet the requirements of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2020 and the United Nations Trafficking in People Protocol. Task forces may be slow by the sheer sizes of them, but they have a better chance of bringing to justice human trafficking syndicates and their cohorts: corrupt public servants and politicians.
To Akhbar, stamping out human trafficking isn't just the job of the government. We agree. There is a need for some sort of public-private partnership to make our plantation and manufacturing sectors free from labour trafficking or forced labour. Truth be told, Malaysia's Tier 3 ranking isn't just because the government didn't do enough. It is also about employers not doing enough.
There are adequate laws in Malaysia, though some need tweaking, but some employers are just looking the other way. Not long ago, exports of a number of Malaysian companies were, rightly or wrongly, slapped with a "withhold release order (WRO)" for alleged forced labour practices. Two companies managed to lift the WRO after some time.
Time is money. So is reputation. For employers, it pays not to look the other way. And for the government, it pays to ensure employers pay a heavy price if they do so.