Nepal, Bangladesh reject Malaysian conditions

With Saturday's deadline on Malaysia’s announcement of new criteria for selecting private recruiting agencies for migrant workers having lapsed, Nepal and Bangladesh have rejected the conditions.

The Malaysian move three weeks ago came in the aftermath of deadly GenZ riots in September, when Nepal’s interim government does not have designated heads in the Foreign Ministry and the Labour Ministry.

Interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki instructed the Labour Ministry to examine the implications of the standards and recommend appropriate steps to address them, but it has said it cannot send Nepali workers to Malaysia based on those criteria.

“In line with Nepal’s foreign employment policy and regulations, we are currently unable to accept or implement the proposed criteria,” says Pitambar Ghimire, spokesperson at the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security in Kathmandu.

In response to the government’s request for their opinion on the Malaysian stipulation, the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) has also flatly rejected the criteria, saying it could create a harmful syndicate and restrict fair competition, violate Nepal’s Constitution and laws, and increase recruitment fees that workers must pay.

On 25 October, the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent letters to the governments of Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, Pakistan and India with 10 criteria meant to ‘rationalise the number of licensed private recruitment agencies permitted to facilitate recruitment and placement of workers to Malaysia’.

The proposed criteria include: at least five years of operating experience, deployment of 3,000 workers in the past three years of operation, experience sending workers to at least three countries, valid licenses and good conduct certificates, five employer testimonials, operating their own training and accommodation centres, and even a requirement for the staffing agency to have a 10,000 sq m office maintained for three years.

“We have communicated our views to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and have proposed discussing various labour related matters with our Malaysian counterparts diplomatically through bilateral dialogue and negotiations including renewal of the Nepal-Malaysia labour agreement,” Pitamber Ghimire said.

NAFEA has urged the government to prevent this measure from moving forward using diplomatic channels, and has held  several gatherings and press conferences opposing the proposal since the Malaysian letter was received three weeks ago.

“We have taken commitment letters from members that they will not be engaged in activities related to the syndicate,” said Sujit Shrestha of NAFEA. “And if they break the commitment, they will face consequences including the revocation of their NAFEA membership. These letters also send a strong message to the government that this is irrevocably and collectively rejected by the industry.”

Bangladesh has also not accepted the proposal despite the 15 November deadline to send a list of recruiters that meet the criteria. That in itself would have been an impossible task to complete to begin with even if the government had accepted the proposal. 

According to media reports, Bangladesh has sent a letter to the Malaysian government requesting that three of the proposed criteria be relaxed. This includes flexibility regarding the requirements for a 10,000 sq ft office, a dedicated training center, and the condition of having deployed 3,000 workers in the last five years.

Just like NAFEA, the recruitment association in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) has also outright rejected the proposal including in a letter to the Bangladeshi government, calling the criteria ‘unprecedented and exclusionary, unreasonable, discriminatory and syndicate-driven  that would effectively disqualify 99% of legitimate agencies from participation’. 

Now that the ball is back in Malaysia’s court and the proposal has not gained much support from two of the major origin countries, it will be interesting to see how they respond.