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KUALA LUMPUR: Some Malaysian palm oil plantations are discouraging foreign workers from returning home at the end of their contracts and asking them to keep working as the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates chronic labor shortages, say groups from rights.
Malaysia’s two largest palm planters said they were not forcing workers to stay, but efforts to repatriate migrants had been delayed by Covid-19 travel restrictions.
Malaysia’s plantations have long faced allegations of mistreatment of the roughly 330,000 migrants who make up 84% of the workforce that produces palm oil, which is used in everything from food to soap. The crop has also come under fire from environmentalists for cutting down forests for planting.
The Hong Kong-based anti-trafficking group Liberty Shared told Reuters it had interviewed dozens of plantation workers in Malaysia and many had said they wanted to leave but had been told they couldn’t because of the restrictions.
Labor rights group Verite and Tenaganita said they had received similar complaints. All three groups said they believed the problem was common and that thousands of workers could be affected.
“We see workers discouraged from leaving, they are asked to keep working, they are paid in cash or not paid at all, they are paid late, they are promised a ticket home and then that promise is not fulfilled”, said Duncan Jepson, managing director of Shared Liberty.
A senior official in the Department of Labor in the Ministry of Human Resources, responsible for foreign workers, said that he had not received any such complaints, but that he took the complaints seriously and urged NGOs to report them.
Most of the foreign workers are from India, Bangladesh and Indonesia and are paid for the amount of palm fruit they harvest, sometimes complaining that they do not earn the RM 1,100 minimum monthly wage.
At the end of the contracts, usually for three years, they can go home, but even before the Covid-19 pandemic there were complaints that companies dissuaded them from leaving because it costs more to replace them.
The pandemic has exacerbated the job crisis with companies unable to transport new workers due to travel restrictions.
Liberty Shared said it sent a complaint to Malaysia’s anti-trafficking agency on December 8, asking for help in the cases of five specific workers who had been trying to go home for months.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Exacerbating vulnerability’
An Indian worker on a plantation run by the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) told Reuters he had been asking to return home since March, partly due to health problems, and his contract expired in June.
The worker, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, said he paid RM500 for the cost of obtaining his passport but had no idea when he could leave.
Another worker on the farm said he had been trying to get home since January. He said he had paid RM2,000 to break his contract after two years, get his passport and a flight back, but he was waiting.
They both said they had continued working.
Felda told Reuters it had not received any reports of such cases, but the Indian High Commissioner in Malaysia said it had received requests for assistance from Felda workers and was working with the company to repatriate them.
India has organized more than 100 repatriation flights since March, according to the mission’s website.
Felda is the largest shareholder in FGV Holdings, the world’s largest producer of crude palm oil.
Companies have been accused for years of forced labor practices, including withholding of passports and sexual violence. In October, the United States banned imports of palm products from FGV due to allegations of labor abuses.
“What Covid-19 did was really exacerbate the vulnerability of these workers,” said Melizel Asunción, Verite’s program manager.
The Indonesian embassy said it had complaints from its citizens trapped in plantations due to the pandemic. He said he was asking companies to help workers go home.
A former Sime Darby plantation worker, who was repatriated to Bangladesh for health reasons, said managers had tried to dissuade the workers from leaving.
“They scold us saying ‘I can’t go back, flights don’t move … work here, stay here, what’s so difficult?'” Said the worker, who also declined to be identified.
Sime Darby, the world’s largest palm producer by plantation area, said it had repatriated 1,125 workers since July and any suggestion to force the workers to stay was unfounded. He said he received around 200 repatriation requests a month.
“While the pace of execution has been hampered by movement and travel restrictions, we continue to engage with all key stakeholders,” it said in a statement.
