48 Tamilians win back Rs 17 lakh as wages from Malaysian co in cross-border legal fight

Forty-eight Tamil workers, who were arrested and deported without being paid from Malaysia, on Wednesday won back their wages, around Rs 17 lakh, through a four-year-long legal fight in the Kuala Lumpur Court of Appeal.

The workers, all from Chennai, had migrated to Malaysia after paying Rs 20,000-30,000 to a Chennai-based recruitment agency in July 2018. They had gone to work at AJN Energy’s telecommunication tower construction site in Malaysia and were offered Rs 25,000 monthly salary by the recruitment agent.

Workers tortured

“The first month they didn’t give us the salary. Then in the second month, they paid a small amount. And after that, they didn’t pay at all. We worked more than three months,” Poosai Pandian Gunasekharan, one among the workers who has won back his salary, told The Federal.

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“Whenever we asked for the salary, we would be beaten up. The supervisors would say that we would be sent back in body bags, which was frightening. Finally, we managed to flee from the company,” Poosai added.

Unfortunately, Poosai and his friends were caught by the police and sent to detention centres, where they were kept for around three months before being deported in February 2019.

When caught by the police, the workers alleged forced labour in the company.

Forced labour

International Labour Organisation’s Convention 29, 1930, defines ‘forced labour’ as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself [or herself] voluntarily”

The law adds that “withholding wages or other promised benefits,” is one of the menaces of penalty.

As Poosai and his friends alleged forced labour, despite having an employment visa, the Malaysian police added trafficking charges to the case.

Meanwhile, talking to The Federal from Malaysia, Sumitha Shaanthinni Kishna, director of Our Journey, a migrant rights organization in Malaysia, said she and “her team are happy that the workers have won back their wages.”

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Sumitha is also a lawyer in Malaysia and represented the workers in court. “This is a classic case of wage theft that many workers face. This time, luck was on our side,” she said. “Poosai and others got deported while she was communicating with the Indian High Commission for justice. She alleged that the High Commission didn’t update her about the deportation.

As part of the proceedings, the workers’ case was taken up the Malaysian labour department. The department issued a decision in favour of the workers, saying they were eligible for 95,617 Malaysian Ringgit (approx. Rs 17 lakh) as wages.

Disagreeing with the labour department’s decision, the company appealed in the high court of Malaysia. The high court decided that the workers weren’t eligible for any settlement as they had made statements to “withdraw the complaints”, seeking speedy repatriation.

When asked about it, Poosai told The Federal that they hadn’t given anything in writing about withdrawing the case for speedy repatriation.

Tracking the victims

Meanwhile, after the workers got deported, Sumitha found it hard to track them in Chennai. Finally, Sr Josephine Valarmathy from National Domestic Workers Movement, a migrant rights and domestic workers grassroots level organisation in Chennai, helped her.

“We found all the 48 workers from different parts of Chennai and Madras High Court lawyer V Ayyadurai helped us to collate the documents to start the legal fight in Malaysia,” Sumitha added.

She approached the Court of Appeal in December 2019. The court heard the case, quashed the high court order and issued a judgment in favour of workers based on Section 69 of the 1955 Malaysian Employment Act.

During the hearing in the Court of Appeal, the labour department officer revealed that wages haven’t been paid to the workers. The Court of Appeal is the highest court to decide labour disputes in Malaysia.

Talking to The Federal, Poosai said: “They feel happy because they have finally got the wages for their work,” adding, “even if it is a small amount, we have got justice.”

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There are around 2,25,000 Indian migrants, both skilled and low-skilled, living in Malaysia. The skilled migrants are mostly IT professionals, engineers, doctors, etc. According to data tabled in Indian Parliament in December 2022, around 262,000 Indians travelled to Malaysia between January and November, 2022. In 2021, the number was 11,000, and in 2020 it was 122,000. While 745,000 Indians flew to Malaysia in 2019, some 727,000 travelled in 2018.

(Rejimon Kuttappan is an independent journalist and author of Undocumented — Penguin 2021)