Reza Mahmud :
An unholy circle become active in the human trafficking from Bangladesh to Malaysia through e-visa as the country is yet to start full-fledged visa issuing for tourists.
Sources said, Malaysian High Commission in Dhaka has made its tourists visa system strict after kept suspended for the last two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Without getting sufficient information, the high commission is not issuing any visa for visitors yet.
But such restrictions failed to keep the unholy agent circles refrained.
Sources said, the circles managed e-visas from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and other countries for Bangladeshi people.
The circle collected about Tk three lakh per head for sending them to Malaysia.More than 500 Bangladeshis entered Malaysia with the help of such unscrupulous circles from April 1 to April 13, as per sources of Malaysian different agencies.
Bangladeshi diasporas in Malaysia said, most of the trafficked people are sent to the jungle areas of the country for doing hardlabour at lower wages.
“One people, I learnt came from my home district of Munshigonj through e-visa as a tourist recently. He informed me over telephone that one company will appoint him for working in garden. But, in reality, the company is bad reputed and used to hire people in nominal wages and compel them for hard work,” said Saidul Islam, from Putrajaya, Malaysia.
He said that his countryman called him using a public telephone saying will call him later buying a own cell phone.
But after passing three days he could not be connected.
Ihsan Hossain, another Bangladeshi migrant in Kuala Lumpur also shared similar experience.
He said, that one of his relatives from Dinajpur district of North Bengal came to the country last week through e-visa.
The culprit circle has taken more than Tk three lakh from him.
They told him before entering the country that his wage would be monthly about Tk 50,000, but after arriving there he could know that he may get Tk 30,000 in a rubber industry there.
Migrant workers in the country said that people are keen to go there are waiting eagerly as the foreign manpower hiring has been stopped for two year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In this situation, the evil quarters are taking the chance to earn huge money by human trafficking.
Meanwhile, Bangladeshi diasporas in Malaysia requested all not to be trapped on e-visa related unscrupulous circles.
Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities are conducting operations to search and stopped forced labour and low wages workers hiring.
Under this operations, the authorities are investigating whether any employer forced workers for hard labour or involved in human trafficking for using forced labour.
The authorities opened 1,285 investigating files and fined 10,7000 Ringgits with filing cases to 135 companies for involving such allegations since February 2021 to March 2022. As per the anti human trafficking law of the Emerging Asian country, one may be sentenced for 15 to 20 years jail.
