…Food and water are scarce, and the agent is asking for RM7,000 to give them back their passports.

Clearly, Ahmed and his friends are being held as bonded slaves and are in debt bondage. We are trying to get a hold of stakeholders, in Malaysia and Bangladesh, as a way of finding a durable solution.

But the bottom line is that these workers are being abused, while authorities, employers and labour agents are complicit…

They work in an unfair and exploitative environment — where passports are held by employers as a form of control, where salaries are denied, where they are provided with the worst living conditions possible, and where they live in fear of the police.

Government agencies such as the labour department (JTKSM) can be part of the solution if only they grow a spine and begin to prosecute employers who violate workers’ rights and undertake labour practices bordering on human trafficking.

We have been told JTKSM raided the place on Monday and shifted the workers to another place….

The conditions under which the migrant management is organised and practised are a grave violation of human rights and strip them of their dignity.

They check all indicators for forced labour…