PUTRAJAYA: The Forced Labour National Action Plan will be launched next month as an approach to deal with forced labour issue in the country including the rubber glove manufacturing sector, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan.

In a statement today, he said the plan contained four strategic objectives from the aspect of awareness, enforcement, labour migration and access to remedy and protection for victims.

He said the issue of forced labour is giving a bad image to the country's rubber glove manufacturing sector in which Malaysia is the leading exporter with 60 per cent of the global market and the sector contributes 51.1 per cent of the overall total export of the country.

According to Saravanan, the issue of forced labour in the rubber glove manufacturing sector is said to be linked to local companies in September 2019 and to date, three local companies had been banned but it was withdrawn in March and September last year.

In this regard, Saravanan also viewed seriously the import ban imposed by the United States Customs and Border Protection Department (US CBP) on rubber-based products manufactured by a subsidiary of Supermax Corporation Bhd.

According to him, the ban was imposed based on investigations of US CBP which found the company had 10 forced labour indicators in the operation of manufacturing company.

On Wednesday, (Oct 20) , US CBP issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on Supermax Corp and all its subsidiaries after receiving information which claimed the use of forced labour in the manufacturing operation of the company.

Following that, the disposable rubber gloves produced by Supermax Corp wholly-owned subsidiaries, Maxter Glove Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, Maxwell Glove Manufacturing Bhd and Supermax Glove Manufacturing, were banned from entering US effective yesterday (Oct 21).

-- BERNAMA