Reza Mahmud :
A considerable number of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia often fall victim to gang-cheating.
According to some victims, a group of miscreants have long been deceiving thousands of Bangladeshi seeking help to process visa renewal. Such gang of cheats take money and passports from these Bangladeshi workers, it is alleged.
“We are always in fear of arrests as tenures of our visas have expired. But some cheats have taken hefty amount of money assuring us of renewing our work permits and visas. Even the cheat-gangs have taken our passports, but they did not give us back renewed visas and work permits,” said Munir Hossain, a Bangladeshi worker at Putra Jaya, Malaysia.
Munir, who hails from Faridpur district, said he and many more Bangladeshi workers who become illegal workers after expiry of the tenures of work permits and visas are harrased by both the police and cheat-gangs.
He said some gangs mainly target Bangladeshi workers who arrived in Malaysia without work permits but got employed. They also target those who lost the tenures of their work permits and visas.
The Malaysian government has asked the illegal foreign workers to renew their visa soon, according to sources close to manpower business.
The Kuala Lumpur government has started a re-hiring programme from February 15, 2016 for the foreign workers overstaying illegally.
Under this scheme, such foreign workers, including Bangladeshis, will get the chance of getting their work permits and visas renewed on submission of an amount of 1000 Ringgit.
The programme will be valid up to December 31this year.
The programme has two aspects, one is to get work permits renewed and the other is to surrender with legal documents and take a chance to return to their own countries.
The Bangladeshi illegal workers want to take the first point of chance to ligalise their stay there.
As many as 1,00000 illegal workers have registered so far to renew their visas. Among them, 30,000 persons have been given renewed work permits. The rest 70, 000 workers are in fear of arrests as they have been trapped by the cheat-gangs.
“The gang collected money from those workers saying that they will manage new work permits and renew visas threatening that if they will not agree to give them money, they will inform police to arrest and push them back to Bangladesh,” Munir said.
The circles in a nexus with some Bangladeshi middlemen who even recruit workers from Bagngladesh on behalf of some Malaysian companies continue to deceive the Bangladeshi workers.
When contacted over phone, Ibrahim Hossain, hailing from Chandpur, now works in Kelang, Kparbatu said, he gave 10,000 Ringgit (BD Tk 2,00000) in two phases in 2015 and 2016 to Masud, a middleman.
“Masud also came to Malaysia in 2008 as a worker. Now he becomes a middleman here. He has taken money but failed to give me renewed visa and work permit,” Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim further said, “Once Masud gave me a renewed work permit but whenever I checked, it was proved to be false. When I asked about the matter and wanted money back, he threatened to kill me.”
