KEY ISSUES (e) Migrant Workers, Asylum Seekers and Refugees (i) Rights of migrant workers Based on the Commission’s research, the major problems faced by migrant workers involved forced labour, irregular working hours, incomplete or irregular payment of wages, deplorable living conditions, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, harassment by law enforcement personnel, denial of the right to unionise, levying of exorbitant processing fees, problems over the contract of employment, outsourcing of recruitment, and disputes/court proceedings. In January 2008, the Commission had led a joint study on migrant workers entitled ‘Research on Migrant Workers to Cover Issues and Problems of Sending and Receiving Countries: Implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers’.1 Among the key recommendations to the Government of Malaysia were: • To review laws and policies that are inconsistent with UN and ILO conventions to which Malaysia is a party; • To amend labour laws to include ‘domestic work’ under legal coverage; • To grant the request of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants to officially visit Malaysia; • To launch a public campaign against employers’ seizure of migrant workers’ passports; • To scrap the system of labour outsourcing and replace it with a system to be operated by the Ministry of Human Resources; • To ensure that conditions in places of detention are in compliance with internationally recognised human rights standards; • To assign medical staff to be permanently based at Immigration Detention Centres; • To collaborate closely with governments of sending countries in resolving migrant workers’ problems; 1 The aim of the project, which is under the SEANF, is to identify the situation of migrant workers from both sending and receiving countries and to advocate for appropriate actions to be taken by the ASEAN governments in addressing the issues of migrant workers. See Chapter 5 of this report for details. 17