Media Rights group: Cambodia and Malaysia must protect domestic workers

Nov 1, 2011
DPA

Phnom Penh – Thousands of Cambodian domestic workers in Malaysia are at risk of a range of abuses including physical and sexual violence, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said Cambodia and Malaysia must act to ensure women are properly protected, and called on both countries to ratify the International Labour Organization’s domestic work convention, which protects workers from violence and exploitation.

Jyotsna Poudyal, HRW’s women’s rights researcher, said Cambodia’s migration policy showed Phnom Penh wanted to promote labour migration, but was noticeably less keen to protect those women who went abroad.

‘The government should stop abdicating responsibility to unscrupulous recruitment agencies and clean up exploitation and abuse,’ she said, adding that a comprehensive migration law was needed.

The New York-based group said very few of the 28 Cambodian women and girls it had interviewed held a positive view of their experience. None had received their full salary, and nearly half reported physical or psychological abuse. One was raped by her employer.

HRW’s report, titled ‘They Deceived Us At Every Step’, also found a litany of abuses by the firms that recruit the women in Cambodia such as underage recruitment, forcible confinement in training centres, cash advances that lead to debt bondage, and misleading information about what the work would entail.

Women and girls also encountered significant problems once they arrived in Malaysia. The most common complaints involved excessive working hours of up to 21 hours a day, no rest days and insufficient food.

In October Cambodia announced it would suspend sending domestic workers to Malaysia after numerous reports of abuses.

Recent news reports have revealed close links between recruitment firms and Cambodian officials in the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Interior.

An estimated 300,000 young people enter Cambodia’s job market each year, but there is little formal work to be had in-country, forcing many to deal with recruitment agencies or people smugglers.

At least 40,000 Cambodian women and girls have been sent to Malaysia as domestic workers since 2008.

Rights groups have long complained that foreign maids in Malaysia lack protection under its labour laws. Cambodia’s suspension could exacerbate Malaysia’s on-going labour shortage, and comes on the heels of a similar ban instituted by Indonesia two years ago.