Shoddy living conditions for contract workers

More evidence that workers, especially contract workers, are being shoddily treated. Workers in Tanjung Bunga who appear to be laying cables are living in deplorable conditions.

Low-wage contract workers, who are more easily exploited, are increasingly replacing regular local workers.

Thanks to Wong Yee Lin and Rosalind Chua for sending in the following report from Tanjung Bunga:

Modern day slavery in Malaysia

Our regulatory authorities have been calling for more transparency, accountability and good corporate governance from companies within Malaysia. Following suit, Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad called upon public listed companies to include in their annual report a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) statement disclosing their activities or practices undertaken.

We ask, what is CSR?

From Wikipedia :

Corporate social responsibility (CSR, also called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible business/ Responsible Business)[1] is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby businesses monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company’s actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere.

CSR is titled to aid an organization’s mission as well as a guide to what the company stands for and will uphold to its consumers. Development business ethics is one of the forms of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. ISO 26000 is the recognized international standard for CSR. Public sector organizations (the United Nations for example) adhere to the triple bottom line (TBL). It is widely accepted that CSR adheres to similar principles but with no formal act of legislation. The UN has developed the Principles for Responsible Investment as guidelines for investing entities.

Have the pillars of Malaysia’s corporate society been responsible?

In a quiet, affluent leafy Tanjung Bunga suburb in Penang, walkers and joggers begin their exercise routines before getting ready for the day. Round and round they go past mansions, plugged into their iPods, clocking up the kilometres, oblivious to the cacophony of barking guard dogs. Today something is different. There’s the smell of food in the morning air.

New neighbours have moved in and they’re squatting by the drain cooking breakfast over a small gas stove.

A large tarpaulin tent has been pitched on a grassy verge by the side of the road and for now, it is home to four foreign workers. Every morning one worker cooks breakfast for his friends and then they walk five minutes down the road to begin work.

At the end of the working day which can be as late as 9.00pm, the workers return to the tent to cook and wash. There is no running water or ‘portaloo’ and the drain functions as an open toilet. Laundry is strung up to dry between trees.

What possible work must these foreign workers be doing that they have to pitch tents along the way?

Who has employed these foreign workers and subjects them to such basic, unsanitary conditions?

From the looks of it, they could be workers hired by a subcontractor responsible for laying or fortifying telecommunications cables for a GLC (not Telekom). The following is a sign near the “settlement”:

And they must be doing it in record time too if the encampment of the foreign workers employed by the subcontractors is anything to go by. It sure must be at record speed as there is no proper housing for these foreign workers. The contractors or the corporation responsible surely must be saving time and costs that would otherwise have been spent in transporting these workers from decent accommodation to the worksite.

Who benefits from the cables being laid? It will be us Malaysians who are the end users of the cables. We are the ones condoning this poor corporate behaviour. We are the ones who see the abuse of basic human rights and go home cheerily without batting an eyelid.

Last year, Indonesia and Cambodia stopped sending domestic workers to Malaysia, thanks to our shocking record of maid abuse. Consider the living conditions of the foreign workers in the tents; it’s an affront to human dignity and basic human rights to stick workers in makeshift tents by the road and expect them to crap in the drain. It seems that the attitudes towards foreign workers prevalent in Malaysian households are replicated by corporate society and vice versa.

The time has come for the pillars of corporate society to take the lead and show Malaysia and Malaysians the way. There is definitely a better way that ensures profits can be made but ethically and in a way that allows workers their dignity.