The 2 faces of humans trafficking : one, problem of migrant workers in involuntary servitude is because they are lucrative business. Say, levy of RM1200 is imposed (by government) on employer per worker. Intermediary agent recruiters working in cahoots with officials and their cronies getting the licence/quota here pass cost to foreign workers who have to come out with RM5000 for working here. (Govt makes RM1200 from levy, the balance of RM3,800 per worker shared between officials with influence to issue the quota, their cronies fronting for them and the agent recruiter). If foreign workers cannot afford RM5000 to pay before they come, foreign workers will have pay the RM5000/- after they have come in via working for it. A deduction of RM200 is made by the employer from their (say) monthly RM600 wages. With RM400 left of their take home wages what could they do but live in servitude housed in employers’ quarters if they have not resorted yet to house breaking and other crimes to recoup? At RM200 per month they have to work in such conditions for 25 months to pay back the employers the RM5000. This is not the worst of their plight. In other cases of bogus recruitment supported by forged licence etc, the employers are ‘non-existent’ here even after the foreign worker has paid RM5000 to recruiter who after collecting the money, disappear leaving them stranded here. They try to merge into population and thrive on crime until caught and deported. They have to make enough from crime to bribe their way through and avoid deportation when caught by authorities.

The other second face of female trafficked victims are from neighbouring countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines ending up as sex slaves or bonded labour here, the same thing happens where everyone – the recruiter, the pimp and triad operative, the close one eye authorities – take their cut.

The problem here is that the exploiters are obsessed with making money where considerations of conscience, ethics and fairness are not in vocabulary, and they are able to so in complicity with officials bribed. You can say that the root problem is the pervasive culture of corruption in the country where the name of the game is to wear the public face of condemning it and the private face of making huge sums of money from it.

The relentless muck raking drive to make money fast and as much as possible is because (1) opportunities are abundant if one has right connections with officials who are willing to ‘close one eye’ for a share in the loot and (2) everyone’s desire to make as much of money as possible to partly live up to the materialistic standards and culture here and keep up with inflation and the other indirect taxes and tolls of all kinds imposed everywhere by authorities and (2) yet save enough to provide the nest/security and an exit route out of the country perceived to be sinking like the Titanic!

This is a self-feeding cycle.

What else can Shahrizat Abdul Jalil say except a bare denial that putting Malaysia in the blacklist was “unfair and unreasonable?

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said it was pointless to react to the US State Department report because Malaysia knew what is best for the country. “We can’t react to something that do not take into account of what we have done. “No single country can act as investigator, prosecutor and judge against another,” Syed Hamid told The Star on 13th June.

But what else can these ministers say? They know the problem is real and complaints empirically verifiable. They have been raised many times by civil societies, human rights activists and even Suhakam.

The government cannot trackle human traffiking because it is rooted in corruption upon which many of its members also thrive and become politicians in the first place because of opportunities to it. It is a larger problem covering all other aspects of national life, the challenges of which cannot be addressed because the one who has authority to fight it, is very one who stands to benefit out of it.