Tenaganita strongly condemns DAP leader Lim Guan Eng’s outrageous statement in Parliament that suggested migrant workers do not need minimum wage or Employees Provident Fund contributions.
This is not just tone-deaf. It reinforces the dehumanisation of migrant labour, legitimises exploitative employment practices, and fundamentally betrays the principles of justice and equality.
Migrant workers form the backbone of Malaysia’s key industries, from construction, manufacturing and plantations to food processing and cleaning services.
They undertake some of the most dangerous, dirty and difficult jobs – sometimes deadly ones – that Malaysians refuse to do. They often work under unsafe and exploitative conditions. To suggest that they do not ‘deserve’ a minimum wage or social security is to validate and support slavery.
Tenaganita’s decades of work, grounded in case documentation, show a widespread denial of fair wages, unpaid overtime, wage theft and hazardous working conditions.
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Minimum wage is not a luxury; it is the bare minimum protection against structural exploitation.
To deny migrant workers EPF is to rob them of dignity in retirement and strip them of the right to long-term security, while employers and corporations continue to profit from their labour.
We ask: how can a party that claims to champion justice and fairness support a position that excludes an entire class of workers from basic protections simply because they are non-citizens?
Many migrant women work in factories, agriculture and food sectors where exploitation is compounded by gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment and unequal pay. To deny them the minimum wage is to perpetuate gendered economic violence.
The callous exclusion of migrant workers from wage protection and social security feeds the capitalist logic of profit over people. It reduces human beings to tools that are disposable, replaceable and silenced.
Migrant workers are not second-class or underclass humans. They are workers. And workers must be protected equally.
No one should be excluded from a living wage or retirement security simply because of their passport.
We demand the following:
- Immediate retraction and apology from Lim Guan Eng for his harmful and irresponsible statement
- Affirmation that Malaysia’s minimum wage policy applies to all workers, local and migrant, without exception
- Mandatory EPF contributions by employers for all migrant workers as part of a fair and just social protection system
- Strong enforcement of labour laws and meaningful penalties against employers who underpay or withhold wages from migrant workers
There can be no progressive politics in Malaysia without migrant justice. There can be no claim to equality while condoning the structural exploitation of migrants.
Any party or leader who justifies such exclusion cannot speak of justice with credibility. – Tenaganita
Glorene A Das is the executive director of Tenaganita.
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