Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh has written to Union Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking her urgent intervention for securing the release of eight youths from Gurdaspur stranded in Malaysia.
In his letter to the External Affairs Minister, he wrote: “I am flagging for your urgent attention the plight of eight youth from Gurdaspur who are stranded in Malaysia.”
They had gone there with the promise of jobs but ended up as slaves with their passports having been taken away by their employer, it said.
“I seek your intervention so that the stranded youth get back their passports and are able to travel back home, or, your ministry should arrange for passports/travel documents to facilitate their return, lest they meet the same fate as the boys still stuck in Iraq, about whose plight we still do not know“.
According to media reports, eight young men of Gurdaspur district who had migrated to Malaysia in search of jobs had approached the Indian High Commission after escaping from a private food packaging company, where they were allegedly being made to work as slaves.
The youths, aged between 22 and 25 years, had gone to Malaysia on March 22 after paying Rs 1.7 lakh each to agents operating in the district on the promise of a well-paying and comfortable job.
In a letter to the Indian High Commissioner, one of the youths Davinder Singh said that he and seven other persons were promised a monthly salary of 1,300 Malaysian Ringgit (Rs 21,000) besides other allowances for working 48 hours a week in the Malaysian firm Maxco Food Industries.
On reaching Malaysia, they were allegedly asked to clean toilets instead of the promised job and forced to work for nearly 20 hours a day, the letter said.
On resisting, the firm manager got them thrashed and called a policeman, who threatened to put them behind bars, Davinder wrote. -- PTI
