Malaysia cancels all Nepal Citizens Visa

Kuala Lumpur is the favorite destination of Nepali workers who are willing to work abroad. The Malaysian Government has cancelled all Nepali Visa’s who were bought there by third party companies. Third Party Companies are the companies which helped Nepali citizens to get their visa under their company name. These third party companies link their employees to other Malaysian Companies.

Malaysia has canceled the outsourcing visa (permission to operate in a company or a third company’s name visa). The Government is removing the provision of the visa after this month that is from April 2019 these visa’s would be invalid.

If the said decision is taken, thousands of Nepali people will lose their job and return home. Other foreign workers, including Nepali will be affected. The above said decision by Malaysian Government has been taken for all workers specially the Labor Group.

Due to the previous visa procedure, the companies were able to exploit the workers ‘hiring labor from countries at cheap rate and deploying them to another company at higher rates. Because of the labor exploitation of the worker, human trafficking and increasing the problem, the arrangement regarding the visa is being removed. 

According to Malaysian officials, more than 100 outsourcing companies are operating in the country and 26,000 foreign workers are employed under those company. Thousands of Nepali workers are estimated to be in the list. Those companies have provided visa to the laborers under their company name from working source countries and employed those workers in third parties or companies.

The Government had given outsourcing companies a period of about 5 months to secure the security of such workers. This visa will remain till March 31 itself. The government has also requested such workers to return visa within the date to their own country or to contact the company that they work for. From 1st April, the Department of Immigration can cancel those visa and legal action would be taken against them, if they do not change the visa within the given date.

After returning to their homework, there is a legal provision in the Department of Immigration to take checkout memo (a license to be taken before returning home). The workers who do not leave the said permission will not be able to go to Malaysia again.

Malaysia is changing the labor law soon. According to the sources, the decision has been taken to remove in equality of labor exploitation and it has also been removed from the employment agency’s personal law.

Most companies have taken workers through outsourcing companies. About 270 recruiting agencies, which facilitate recruitment of foreign workers in Malaysia are active. Employees are working on such visas as well as in areas like service, agriculture, construction and production.