Somewhere in Malaysia
Policemen, always looking for ways to bust crime or for other lucrative reasons, spotted Ahmed’s friend outside the building, busy on his phone.
A Bangladeshi’s favourite pastime is talking, whether on the phone with friends, family or himself, but talking was a must.
They held loud marathon conversations and did not care if the whole world was listening.
Some say they also talk in their sleep, but this is not substantiated with proof.
By just body language, the bloodhounds or our expert cops could sniff out opportunities, so they trailed him back to the hotel room. Continued below.
In his story, in four segments in FMT, Charles Santiago, a former MP for Klang, relates this ongoing inhumane act that this article will re-tell. Charles Santiago narrates Ahmed’s story, a saga which began on 28 March 2023.
Ahmed is the fictitious name Santiago had given his source, being concerned for his safety.
Dhaka Bangladesh
Ahmed's story is about 41 Bangladeshi workers who flew to Malaysia to escape poverty in their own country with aspirations to begin afresh, but short-lived.
With a promise of jobs with good wages, free accommodation, and time off, they believed their luck had changed in their favour but were unaware of what the devil had in store for all of them.
To make this happen, Ahmed and his 40 men had to sell lock, stock and barrel of whatever little they had and begged and borrowed money from friends and relatives.
Further, they took bank loans with high-interest rates, ridiculously between 10 to 14 per cent. The bank Interest was settled by the sale of the yield from the harvest of the crops.
All this was to pay the employment agency, which promised them a better future.
The employment agency charged them within a vicinity of 27,000 for recruitment fees, medical checkups, biometrics and the multiple trips made to the employment agency in Dhaka.
The Bangladeshis went along with this after they were assured of making back what they had spent within a year.
They had doubts even before they embarked from Dhaka; for instance, they were not informed of the nature of their jobs, and it was only announced 2 days before departure.
The currency exchange rate was the confidence booster which cleared all negativity and suspicions of any scam.
There were discrepancies in the contracts signed; they had noticed a change in employers which was played down by their handlers stating that they were their subsidiaries.
Copies of the contracts were not given to them, but they were smart enough to take photographs of them with their phones.
Before going to the airport, they were briefed to lie to the immigration about the fee they had each paid the agency; they were to tell them that it was just RM 3493 and not the actual amount of RM 27,000.
They were threatened that they would not make the trip if they revealed anything other than that.
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Batik Air brought them to Malaysia without any arrangements made for meals in the 5-hour journey, so they landed in KLIA on empty stomachs, still very much impervious to the insensitivity of their agents.
After they disembarked, they were met by a person named Derek, accompanied by an unnamed woman, who were both representatives of the employment syndicate.
They conducted roll call and took their passports, and handed it to an immigration officer, who stamped them without questions and upon which they were taken back by the lady.
Ahmed and the rest requested their passports back as the agency in Dhaka promised them, but things had changed here.
They arrived at 4 am at a hotel and were still starving.
It was the power and wonder of Facebook that had brought Ahmed and Santiago together after the former had posted his plight and pleaded for mercy on FB.
The inaction of countless pleas to their embassy in Kuala Lumpur resorted to contacting Charles Santiago for help which he immediately responded in kind.
At the hotel, Ahmed met another group of 26 living in the next room who have been there since December 2022, and they claimed to be employed and not paid.
After having worked without wages in Penang and Johor, they were only paid 300 by the agent, and that too after some protests.
All 41 of them were given one room to live in, but their ill luxury only worsened when the agency put another 30 in with them five days later.
Their bodies curled, touching each other, fitting like a human jigsaw puzzle when they slept in the room where all 70 of them shared one bathroom with a toilet and without fans.
Dhall, vegetables, rice and a small bottle of water were served twice a day daily by the hotel. They had to fork out their own money to buy additional bottles of water.
Ravi, another Bangladeshi, was their handler for Derek and visited them every 20 days to raise their hopes of getting work.
Continuation
The policemen began looking for angles in the name of investigation to create instant wealth for themselves.
The trapped Bangladeshi’s presented the photocopies of their passports, the little information that they had about the employment syndicate.
Some 30 or 40 calls were made to Ravi without any response, and the police had to go to phase two to make their presence felt.
Ahmed and his mates were told to sit down and have their phones face downwards to avoid any recording of the event. One of them tried and was caught, and his handset was smashed to bits.
During their investigation, a policeman found RM 500 in a bag from which he tore up a RM 100 note and burned another pocketing the remaining 300, and meanwhile, another cop slapped one of them for having cigarettes.
Like a silverback beating his chest, it was a show of power, which was symbolically a forceful and rude introduction to the PDRM.
The custodians of law and order then asked all of them to hand over all the money they had for not having their travel documents.
Ahmed, in tears, said, ‘We were already living in a small room and in bad shape, yet they had the heart to extort money from us.’
Derek arrived with Ravi an hour later with their passports and paid off the policemen.
To be continued on Part 2
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