Read the report here.
An Indonesian single father remits money to his hometown in East Lombok every month to cover daily expenses for his two sons. Like many others from his town, the 2018 earthquake prompted him to seek jobs further afield to rebuild their lives.
An added burden to him and many other migrant workers is the initial recruitment costs. These costs are billed by recruitment agents who help migrant workers get jobs in other countries and are often opaque in terms of what they cover.
Sadly, his story is not unique. Unethical recruitment practices and excessive recruitment fees are common worldwide and can lead to forced labour indicators such as debt bondage and other forms of labour exploitation. Migrant workers often pay excessive amounts of money to recruitment agents and sub-agents, often having to sell property, borrow money from relatives and friends, or take out loans from money lenders in the hopes of finding a good job in another country.
Globally, there are growing expectations for companies to commit to ethical recruitment practices. Employers, regardless of their size of operation and economic sector, are expected to bear the full cost of recruitment and placement of their migrant workers – often above and beyond national legal requirements.
With this in mind, we have undertaken a snapshot study to understand recruitment practices among small and medium sized companies in the Malaysian palm oil industry. The study covers recruitment of migrant workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia and Nepal, and highlights both employer and migrant worker experiences and costs during recruitment and post-arrival.
An important finding is that employers and migrant workers appear to have paid for overlapping items in the recruitment process. While workers were not aware of the exact breakdown of fees paid, they were broadly aware of what items were covered. The study found that some costs paid by employers in Malaysia, such as airfare, visas, working permits, service fees for recruitment agents, as well as medical and insurance fees at the country of origin – were also believed to have been paid by the workers in their country of origin.
