Government not condoning any act of forced, child labour

The Malaysian government, which does not condone any act of forced and child labour, takes seriously allegations and findings in the report of the United States Department of Labour (DoL), which was released recently.

In a statement on Wednesday, the government said it had established an inter-ministerial task force, comprising the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), Ministry of Human Resources (MoHR), and Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities (MPIC) to investigate allegations in the findings.

"The taskforce is investigating these allegations and working with representatives from the electronics and oil palm sectors to verify the claims made in the report.

"We will take serious measures to ensure any such practises, if found, are curtailed," said a joint-statement issued by MITI, MoHA and MoHR.

According to the DoL's findings, Malaysia was listed as one of the countries with incidences of such practises (of forced and child labour), where specific reference was made to these two sectors.

As a response to the issue, the government had embarked on a series of discussions with representatives from the United States Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, as well as with the DoL in Washington DC.

"The discussions are aimed to seek for more details and to register our concern over such allegations, which were borne out of a survey by Verite Inc.

"Our concerns over Verite's study include the small sample size - a sample size of 501 does not represent the more than 300,000 workers in the electrical and electronics (E&E) industry in Malaysia," the statement emphasised.

The government said that multinationals companies (MNCs) in the E&E industry in Malaysia were members of the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and currently governed by the latter's code of conduct.

"They (MNCs) are in compliance with the standards of EICC and regular audits are undertaken to ensure that treatment of foreign workers are as stipulated in these standards. (And) these include audits of accomodation and treatment of workers by contractors or hiring agents," it said.

The government pointed out that suppliers to MNCs were not governed by the standards.

"The DoL considers these intermediaries (outsourcing companies in Malaysia as well as agents in the source countries) as legally the employers of these foreign workers rather than the company they work for," it said.

The government reiterated that the labour issues would be continuously monitored and appropriate actions taken to address compliance to labour laws and standards.