The national news agency of Malaysia, Bernama, reports that Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in addressing the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York had said that “Malaysia is on the same page with countries like Britain on the need to stamp out human trafficking and modern slavery”.

Zahid expressed the “need for collective regional and international efforts to deal with the problem of human trafficking and modern slavery in an effective manner”.

The British Prime Minister Theresa May, speaking ahead of the meeting in New York, said that across the world an estimated 45 million people were enduring experiences that were “simply horrifying in their inhumanity”.

While the disclosures made by Malaysia’s deputy leader is true in so far as the statistics he stated go, Malaysia must be more honest with itself.

The modern slavery that is a huge problem the world over, is magnified here in Malaysia given its over-reliance on cheap, foreign labour and profiteering mindsets.

If the definition of modern slavery is collectively agreed as ‘obtaining a person for compelled labor through the use of force, fraud, or coercion’ then the deputy prime minister of Malaysia must tackle and justify the issues and concerns associated with this phenomena where it is speculated that the total numbers of foreign legal and illegal workers in Malaysia has nearly outnumbered the Chinese Malaysian and Indian Malaysian population.

When a government allows foreign workers’ recruiting agencies to make profits on both sides (sending and receiving countries), is this not a sign of buying and selling humans?

When a government imposes levies, fees and compounds on foreign workers that easily in total translates to an average of three to six thousand ringgit - or three to six months of wages per worker, is this not squeezing the unfortunate foreign workers who are fleeing desperate economic conditions in their homeland to save their families?

When a government is unable to account for the total number of illegal foreign workers in the country, which is estimated or speculated to be twice the number of legalised workers, is it not guilty of allowing modern slavery to thrive?

When a government is incapable of enforcing safe and reasonable working and living conditions for millions of foreign workers that help a nation to keep developing, is it not guilty of the sins of modern slavery?

These are some of the thoughts that the UNGA should delve on, failing which the very credibility and image of a ‘United Nations’ assembly becomes a farce.

Better moral fibre needed

For us Malaysians, we must have better moral fibre. What use is it to parade at international platforms trumpeting successful statistics when we are guilty of the sin of omission and commission with regards to how we ignore, treat and profit from foreign labour?

Because this country has been blessed in so many ways, we may not fully appreciate what it is to be slave in the modern sense. But suppose some decades down the road through some national catastrophe or immense misfortune we are driven away from our shores in search of a living for us and our families and if this scourge called modern slavery was awaiting us, what would be our story line?

If our leaders themselves are more interested only in the form and not the substance, how else would we expect the citizen and the business communities to tackle modern slavery?

These are some thoughts that should cut a deep cord in the souls of all those who preach that they doing their best to protect the dignity of humanity.