Political operatives in Mr Anwar’s inner circle acknowledged that the premier and the Home Ministry had come under intense lobbying.
The big test facing the government now is whether Bestinet will accept the new terms under the proposed three-year extension or once again turn to its politically powerful patrons to pile pressure on Mr Anwar’s administration and further undermine the government’s economic reforms, noted labour activists.
Government officials declined to discuss the new conditions over the payment protocols and the demand for Bestinet to surrender the Swift code.
Labour activists speculated that the move could be aimed at dealing with the widespread problems associated with the recruitment of workers from Bangladesh, which is one of Malaysia’s main sources of foreign labour.
The official fee for a single Bangladeshi recruit is roughly RM4,500 (US$955) but, in reality, each migrant worker pays nearly four times that amount to a cast of players in a convoluted recruitment process that also involves forcing employers to pay hidden fees for each worker.
MESSY POLITICS
Before assuming the premiership after an inconclusive general election in November 2022, Mr Anwar and his coalition partners in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance had been hugely critical of Bestinet’s stranglehold on migrant labour intake, which was granted by the previous government led by now-jailed former premier Najib Razak.
But pushing through reforms has been an uphill struggle for Mr Anwar because of Malaysia’s messy politics.
Mr Anwar was forced to forge an alliance with the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and other unlikely political bedfellows to form a unity government and become premier.
While the ruling alliance, headed by PH together with other regional parties in the east Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, enjoys a solid majority in the 222-member parliament, relations between the component parties remain testy and tenuous, forcing the premier to often make compromises that trump the reform platform.
“The country is being held hostage by the players in the foreign labour recruitment system and unless the government gets tough, (Mr Anwar’s) reforms will go nowhere,” said Mr Santiago.
Mr Santiago noted that Malaysia’s reliance on foreign labour, together with groups of undocumented migrants who sneak into the country through its porous borders with the help of human trafficking syndicates, has created other distortions to the economy.
For one, the large presence of a cheap foreign labour force has allowed the private sector to keep a lid on wages, which in turn has hurt many ordinary Malaysians in the lower income brackets.
“Putting food on the table is a fundamental issue for many ordinary Malaysians and a political problem for the government. The only way is to deal with the migrant labour problem decisively,” said Mr Santiago.
