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Refugees reap rewards from labor
shortage
By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR - Finally, after a long, hard
struggle for recognition, Jaafar Hussein, a
Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, can afford to smile
this International Labor Day, which falls on
Sunday.
That's because the Malaysian
government has decided to address a long-festering
refugee problem involving the Rohingya to help
solve the nation's desperate labor shortage, which
resulted after a move to deport some 1 million
undocumented Indonesian workers and rehire them as
legal laborers backfired for a variety of reasons,
causing a severe labor shortage and forcing the
government to canvass as far as Pakistan and Nepal
for cheap labor. Recognition for the Rohingyas is
now seen as way to fill the shortfall, and
officials in Kuala Lumpur announced recently that
the government will issue work permits to the
10,000 Rohingya within its borders.
"I
have worked illegally, been hunted and lived in
fear for over nine years," Jaafar, 34, told Inter
Press Service from his room in a ramshackle hut in
Kapar town, a mecca for small-scale industries
that hire foreign workers about 30 kilometers
southwest of the capital. "A work permit would
give us some status ... we don't have to run and
hide like thieves," said Jaafar, who makes
electronic components in a small backyard factory
for a firm in China. "I might even get married and
raise a family," he said with a smile.
The
Rohingyas are Muslims from Myanmar and have lived
illegally in Malaysia since the late 1980s. They
have been subject to periodic arrests, beatings
and deportations.
Deprived of citizenship
after Myanmar gained independence from Britain in
1948, the Rohingyas were persecuted and gradually
pushed out of Arakan state, their homeland in
Myanmar. Since then, they have shunted about from
one inhospitable Asian state to another for nearly
50 years. A sizeable Rohingya community lives as
refugees in Bangladesh. But the Rohingyas prefer
Malaysia because it is Muslim, wealthy and
officials are reasonably lenient and easily bribed
to close one eye.
Their plight is made
worse by the fact that many Asian countries, such
as Malaysia, have refused to sign the 1951 United
Nation Convention on Refugees.
Officially
there are about 10,000 Rohingyas in Malaysia, but
the refugees themselves estimate their population
at 35,000. The discrepancy is another indication
of the long years of neglect the Rohingyas have
suffered, both here in their adopted country and
in Myanmar, their birthplace.
Unlike his
predecessor Mahathir Mohamad, whose eyes were
firmly on the leap forward to industrialization,
current Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has a heart
for the small man that the great wheel of
development has neglected.
Abdullah's
emphasis on agriculture, fisheries and health and
welfare is giving status to Malaysia's poor and
displaced. Even Rohingyas, who were periodically
arrested and taken to the Thai border where they
were told to walk across and disappear, have come
to benefit from the change in policy.
Myanmar, meanwhile, refuses to recognize
the Rohingyas as its nationals, making it
difficult to negotiate with the ruling military
junta to repatriate them. Because they are
stateless people, Malaysia also refuses to
recognize the Rohingyas as refugees.
Though many Rohingyas hold letters from
the Geneva office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), recognizing
their status as "persons of concern", Malaysian
police seldom recognize these documents.
In a vicious cycle of exploitation,
Rohingyas are paid low wages because they have no
proper papers and no legal status. As a
consequence, many Rohingyas work at night and
sleep in wayward places during the day to avoid
arrest.
"We mostly work in night markets
slaughtering and cleaning animals and fish and as
garbage collectors," said Rahiman, a Rohingya
working at the Pudu fish market in Kuala Lumpur.
While the new policy to issue work permits
to the Rohingya could mark a reversal of fortune
for these refugees, there is still fear that the
Malaysian government could retract their
pronouncements. Last year the government raised
similar hopes when it said Rohingyas would be
given refugee status, but that policy has since
been quietly shelved.
"We hope the new
policy to give us work permits does not suffer the
same fate as the promise to recognize us as
refugees," said Rahiman.
After several
months of discussions with the UNHCR office here,
the government announced it would issue temporary
stay permits to the Rohingyas, allowing them to
work legally. These documents will also allow them
to get medical care and send their children to
Malaysian schools.
"It is time they [were]
absorbed into the labor force," Home Minister Azmi
Khalid told IPS. "They are already here and it
would be a waste if we don't recognize them or
give them job opportunities."
Human-rights
lawyers and activists have also welcomed the move.
And even the often critical Malaysian Bar Council
gave kudos to the government and urged it to stick
to its promises.
S Arulchelvam,
coordinator with Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM), a
leading human-rights organization here, said the
decision to issue work permits "would give [the]
Rohingyas a status they [have] struggled for many
years and also better their living conditions".
"The government must also ensure the
Rohingyas are not exploited by unscrupulous
employers. They are entitled to all the legal
protection enjoyed by Malaysian workers under the
law," the rights activist told IPS. "They also
have a right to better housing, schooling and
medical care."
Moreover, the UNHCR said it
sees the latest government move as a way to
alleviate the vicious cycle of abject poverty that
tends to strangulate the Rohingyas. "It recognizes
the reality that third country resettlement for
the Rohingyas are almost zero and that most of
them have lived here and settled, albeit in
terrible circumstances," a senior UNHCR official
said. "This is one path to better themselves ...
we are working with the government to help them."
(Inter Press Service) |
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