Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
Advocates say this omission by member-countries in a non-binding declaration on migrant workers’ protection by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could push millions of transient workers into accepting more dirty and demeaning jobs and weak bargaining positions.
<P>What has prevailed
in bilateral or multilateral arrangements on migrant workers is the movement of
business and skilled people not on semi-skilled and unskilled workers, says Chia
Siow Yue of the Singapore-headquartered East Asian Development Network (EADN).</P><P>Chia
was recently in the country to speak on the “Asean Declaration on the Protection
and Promotion on the Rights of Migrant Workers” that was forged in the country
two months ago.</P><P>Her insights come as a second-thought on a pact that received
high praises even from militant migrant advocates’ groups like the Migrant
Forum in Asia (MFA).</P><P>“It (Asean declaration) is good news for migrant
workers,” MFA’s William Gois said in a separate forum.</P><P>Gois said
the Philippines capitalized on its hosting of the Asean summit to move this non-binding
declaration forward.</P><P>This is a big first step for “Asean governments
to recognize the contributions of migrant workers,” he added.</P><P>Gois
echoes analysts’ views that temporary migrant workers remain the source of
many of the Asean member-countries’ economic strength in the past five years.</P><P>The
Philippines, for one, has weathered one financial crisis after another because
of billions of overseas Filipinos’s dollar remittances.</P><P>International
Monetary Fund data on the balance of payments has cited the Philippines as Asean’s
leading recipient of remittances from 380,080 temporary contract workers.</P><P>Data
from 1998 to 2005 by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration bared that
the Philippines has deployed some 196,900 temporary contract workers to Singapore,
54,914 to Malaysia, 96,748 to Brunei, 14,051 to Indonesia, 12,921 to Thailand,
and 5,446 to Vietnam.</P><P>Still, Gois personally thinks the declaration “is
only for a select group of workers, and eases out low-skilled migrant workers”.</P><P>“Unskilled
labor is being hired as cheap labor in Asean’s competitive industries. Negotiators
in trade talks seem blind to the plight of unskilled workers,” he added.</P><P><B>Challenges</B></P><P>CHIA
cited that the Asean pact only brought more challenges to protect these workers
–mostly in dirty, demeaning, and dangerous jobs.</P><P>Studies have noted
that domestic helpers are vulnerable to sexual and physical violence while several
cases of riots occurred in construction projects involving Asian foreign workers.</P><P>Gois
says he is worried that the rights of low-skilled workers in Asean “will
not be protected”.</P><P>He cited as example MFA’s documentation of
Malaysia’s continued crackdown of undocumented migrants.</P><P>Inputs by
Vijayakumari Kanapathy of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies
in Malaysia reveal there would be an increase in the number of migrant workers
in his country.</P><P>Kanapathy said that while his country classifies “contract
migrant workers” as “semi-skilled and unskilled for foreign workers,”
Malaysia will face “a structural demand for foreign workers… and the
demand for low-skilled labor is seldom eliminated (to favor) more skilled workers.”</P><P>Still,
the Asean declaration outlines duties and obligations that member-countries that
send and receive foreign labor should abide by to protect and respect migrant
workers’ rights.</P><P>Among these duties is for receiving countries to provide
migrant workers “who may be victims of discrimination, abuse, exploitation,
and violence with adequate access to the legal and judicial system of the receiving
states”.</P><P>Heads of states signed the declaration, including Prime Ministers
Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore and Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia,
whose countries are the leading destinations of migrant workers and immigrants
in the region.</P><P>Among Asean countries, the Philippines is the only one that
ratified the United Nations Migrant Workers Convention, in July 1995. Indonesia’s
and Cambodia’s governments signed the Convention both on September 2004,
that being the first step to ratify a UN treaty.</P><P>But Chia said the pact
only covers the management of highly-skilled migrants and expatriates.</P><P>“Developing
countries will be challenged to negotiate with host countries [so that] other
types of workers will be accommodated, not just business people and health professionals,”
Chia said at a forum organized by EADN and the Philippine Institute of Development
Studies. </P><P><B>Integration</B></P><P>FOREIGN Affairs Assistant Secretary Luis
Cruz said in a forum in Quezon City the migration pact should be seen in a broader
context of the Asean vision of economic integration.</P><P>Cruz said the pact
was hatched along the line of consolidating the region’s trade strengths
as East Asian economies of neighboring Japan, China, and Korea continue to spiral
upward.</P><P>This declaration is part of a desire “for the freer movement
of goods, capital and labor,” Cruz explained.</P><P>“It is the wave
of the future,” he added.</P><P>The Asean region hopes to build an “Asean
community” by 2015 so that it is at par with other regions such as the EU
and the Northern American Free Trade Alliance (Nafta), said the director general
for Asean affairs at the DFA.</P><P>Cruz explained that along this principle,
the Asean has made agreements to mutually recognize engineers and nurses —both
skilled occupations— coming from member-countries.</P><P>This mutual recognition
of skills agreement means Southeast Asian engineers and nurses can just go to
any Asean country to work, and their countries’ academic and professional
qualifications will be respected in Asean countries.</P><P>Part of this integration,
according to Cruz, is labor migration. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia
have been deploying its workforce as migrant workers.</P><P>Vietnam has a 27-year-old
overseas employment program and its 350,000 workers are in some 40 destination
countries, Vu Quoc Huy of Hanoi’s National Economics University said during
the PIDS-sponsored forum.</P><P>Citing 2001 to 2003 data from Indonesia’s
Department of Manpower and Transmigration, Carunia Mulya Firdusay of the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences said some 998,228 migrant workers are in countries such
as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia,
among others.</P><P>Ambassador Rosario Manalo of the Department of Foreign Affairs
said that she can only wish for a regional treaty or convention on migrant workers
that will include low-skilled workers.</P><P>However, Manalo didn’t call
for a review and possible amendment to the two-month old pact. OFW Journalism
Consortium</P><P><I>Source: http://davaotoday.com/2007/04/02/asean-migration-pact-seen-to-push-low-skilled-workers-into-further-risk/1</I>
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