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PETALING JAYA: The largest group of workers in the country has called on authorities to “quickly implement” an amended law on worker accommodation.
In a statement, the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) said the government’s three-month grace period for employers to comply with the amendments to the Minimum Standards of Housing and Workers’ Services Act of 1990 ends today.
“The government should not succumb to any excuses from non-compliant employers as they have been given enough time to do so,” MTUC Secretary General J Solomon said, adding that financial inconvenience was not an acceptable reason.
The amended law, he said, had been approved by Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara last July.
Solomon said MTUC had not seen any significant move by employers to address the poor living conditions of workers, especially migrants who continued to live in crowded and miserable conditions.
“We consider this to mean that many employers continue to take the issue of worker accommodation lightly, despite their continued risk of becoming clusters for the spread of Covid-19.
“In fact, there were kongsi or worker rooms at the Kuala Lumpur construction sites that turned into Covid-19 clusters infecting dozens of workers.”
He said that the director general of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, has cited those living conditions as a reason for the spread of the coronavirus.
“Despite their warnings, we found employers forcing 15-20 workers to share three-bedroom townhome apartments less than 1,000 square feet with one or two bathrooms.”
Migrant workers, he said, had been living in miserable conditions even before Covid-19 and this was a violation of International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions.
“In fact, a low level of accommodation is one of the 11 indicators of forced labor defined by the ILO.
“The government must ensure that laws are implemented in all sectors of the economy in accordance with Recommendation 115 of the International Labor Organization (Workers’ Housing Recommendation, 1961).”
