AN English daily reported that around 3230 Bangladeshi migrants are in various Malaysian detention camps and jails and 1593 amongst them are in 12 Malaysian detention centres while rest 1,637 are in different jails on various criminal charges. It has been found that most of them were arrested for overstaying and for entering Malaysia illegally. Through past reports, it has been seen that Bangladeshi migrants have increasingly been seen in Malaysian detention camps and jails as many trafficking victims from the country made the dangerous sea crossing to Malaysia on boat to seek their fortune. Apparently, Malaysian immigration police lock up foreign nationals in the detention camps when caught by authorities without valid travel documents while others are sent to the jails from the camps after sentencing imprisonment for different terms. Data show that a total of 50,000 Bangladeshi nationals were sent back to the country in the last six years in the process.
It is clear that the interest of our government is to earn money through slave trade. It is no concern of our foreign missions or the governments how our workers are treated in the countries they are sent or go to. Those countries which treat our workers as slaves and torture them, should be denied our workers. The government must accept the responsibility for creating jobs within the country. A government of any modern day nation cannot engage in slave trade.
For the carelessness of our missions abroad, the foreign countries do not care how inhumanly they use workers and cheat them. They are virtually treated as slaves. The failure lies with our greed to earn foreign exchange at any cost to the migrant workers. Our good relationship with Malaysia has not been so good.
