Today is Labour's Day.
This is my first rally for workers' day after Bersih 3.0 and Hijau rally.
In fact our workers are being ill-treated in Malaysia. We do not have an actual statistic, because the employers have taken over the control and nobody will say a word out unless these workers are escaped.
Some workers from other SouthEast Asia countries came here worked as domestic workers. These unfortunate women were being ill-treated by their employers: physically abused ie. beat them, poured hot water on them, striped their clothes and beat them, sexually harassed them and even worst raped them. They were also being verbally abused, with their wages and passport withheld, being controlled of their movement and freedom to communicate with their family, given inadequate and clean food, over worked (worked at home and at work place), and not given day off at all. Some even worse, being trafficked to be
We are not aware of these complaints because the workers have no access to complaint with their limitation. Apparently outsiders have no ideas of what had happened on the workers. What can we do?
Luckily there is an International Labour's Day remind us who are the labours and why we need to fight for their rights.
The violations on these people are actually unheard and unseen. With limitation of language and complaint mechanism they are on the disadvantaged side. Therefore, we must raise awareness of public good citizen to do good on our workers. We shall end modern slavery.
A newly met friend said, what we are enjoying today is actually fought by our grandfathers and fathers. We must contribute at least something for our future generations so that they can enjoy what we have today. He also said, why are these workers want to migrate to Malaysia to work? It is because the poor education leads them being ill-treated. We should end this bad cycle. Even though we are well-educated, doesn't mean we can bully them. What is not right being treated to our workers, we must fight for them, until their voice is heard and concerned. In our society, there are so many voices unheard of, unseen, and being discriminated. They are the "oppressed". We shall not abide them, we must fight for them!
Recently, the new regulations on domestic workers from the government was ridiculously unacceptable. There was no detailed and comprehensive of employers' guideline for the workers and I doubted the officers are merely writing them out as if they are the employer.
It should not be like this. I should really ask these so called policymakers to work as a domestic workers for a month then only write the rules out.
It's been a tiring day for me. The journey shall not end by one day.
PS: if you came across someone, migrant workers, who need help. Please let us know!
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| The rally |
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| Not for the rich richer |
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| The 10 thousands and more crowd in Dataran Merdeka |
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| People are United. |
