Is 6P programme chaos an engineered mess?

COMMENT For the past 29 months, the home affairs minister has dragged migrant workers and employers in Malaysia through the shady and distressing rollercoaster of uncertainty and confusion that is the 6P programme.

What was meant to be a fairly straightforward exercise to register migrants, and create a pathway for them to either return home without penalties or seek legal status and continue working in Malaysia has resulted in nothing short of a festering mess of scams by agents, migrants swindled off thousands of ringgit, employers left without workers, and migrants either unable to become documented despite engaging in the processes by the state, or becoming undocumented as a result of it.

It also has, as seen in the past month, led to the state unleashing thousands of enforcement officers to hunt down undocumented migrant workers, while doing nothing to fix the systems that led to migrants becoming and staying undocumented.

On Oct 3, Muhyiddin Yassin, deputy prime minister and head of the cabinet committee on foreign workers, announced that the government is “pulling the plug on the 6P programme”.

This comes mere days after the Home Ministry, following a visit by Indonesia’s Minister for Labour and Transmigrasi, stated that the 6P programme will be extended for another three months (Oct 15 to Dec 15, 2013) to allow workers who are cheated under the 6P to register and obtain their work permits directly from the Immigration department.

On Oct 4, The Star newspaper (pg 3) reported that a “special programme to manage illegal immigrants will begin on Oct 21 to help solve applications by employers whose workers could not be legalised after being cheated by the employment agents”.

This ‘special programme’ is meant to run until Jan 20, 2014, and will run concurrently with Ops 6P.

Are we  to understand that the 6P will be stopped and replaced by another programme that will carry out one of the functions of the 6P, and that despite the plug being pulled on the 6P, the crackdown phase of the 6P will in fact continue?

Mess deliberate?

This flip-flopping and confusing statements by the Malaysian government on the purpose, deadlines and timelines of the 6P appear to be the only consistency throughout this entire programme, and it is what has led us to this mess.

After more than two years of the 6P and a long list of unanswered questions, reports to the state seeking clarification and action that have been ignored, and hundreds of cases of rights violations related to the 6P that have been filed to but not investigated by the numerous responsible enforcement departments and ministries, we are left asking if this isn’t an ‘accidental mess’ after all, but rather a deliberate act by the government to create a state of confusion and uncertainty.

If that is the case, who is benefiting from this chaos? And who is profiting from the millions of ringgit made through the 6P?

Certainly not the thousands of migrants who have been cheated of their money by agents; not the thousands more hiding in fear for their lives or locked away in immigration detention centres as a result of the crackdown, nor the employers left in a lurch without workers despite adhering to the processes laid out by the state.

It is even more startling that the home minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, can claim that the 6P will also serve to address human trafficking in the country.

That comment by the home minister is certainly not congruent with allowing the implementation of the 6P in this opaque and chaotic manner, facilitating for even more opportunities for agents to cheat migrants and leave them vulnerable to bonded labour and human trafficking.

A flaccid comment to the media by the government that it wants to stop human trafficking should not be mistaken for the state actually taking strategic and effective measures to prevent and respond to trafficking of persons.

Crackdown on trafficking or victims?

A case in point is the announcement of this new special programme that will run until Jan 20, 2014. While there will be avenues for employers to address their grievances through this ‘special programme’, no mention has been made to ensure that justice is served and redress accessed by migrants whom the state themselves recognise as having been cheated by agents.

Furthermore, with the crackdown through Ops 6P, these migrants will in fact continue to be hounded, arrested, detained and deported by enforcement officers for being undocumented. This flagrant abuse of human rights is unacceptable.

Tenaganita fully supports the auditor-general’s report that aptly pointed out that the implementation of programmes to address human trafficking was unsatisfactory especially in punishing offenders who exploit and profit off workers.  

RM15.37 million was budgeted in 2011 for the Council for Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants (Mapo), which is also meant to consult with civil society.

It doesn’t appear to be for a lack of resources as to why the state has not responded to our numerous statements, detailed questions, case reports, memorandums and open calls for engagement.

Tenaganita would like to remind the government, especially the home minister and the deputy prime minister as head of the cabinet committee on foreign workers that they and the ministries they head must act in a manner that is open, accountable and transparent.

The continued emphasis on knee jerk reactions to arising problems has only led to a system that supports extreme forms of exploitation of migrants and a culture of modern day slavery.

Accountability can only be in place with clear and comprehensive policies and regulations that are developed and implemented through a rights-based framework, and with substantive and consistent engagement with the affected communities and related state and non-state actors.

This loud and uncomfortable radio silence to the questions and pleas by civil society, by migrants who have been affected, and by employers cannot continue, especially not when lives are at stake, and rights are being abused systematically.

We await a response.

IRENE FERNANDEZ is executive director of the migrant rights NGO Tenaganita.