Forced Labour National Action Plan to be launched next month
Malaysia’s Human Resources Minister said that the Forced Labour National Action Plan would be launched next month as an approach to deal with forced labour issue in the country including the rubber glove manufacturing sector. Datuk Seri M Saravanan said the plan contained four strategic objectives covering awareness, enforcement, labour migration and access to remedy and protection for victims.
In a statement issued last week, he said the issue of forced labour was giving a bad image to the country’s rubber glove manufacturing sector in which Malaysia is the leading exporter with 60% of the global market and the sector contributes 51.1% of the overall total export of the country. He added that the issue of forced labour in the rubber glove manufacturing sector was said to be linked to local companies in September 2019 and to date, three local companies had been banned but it was withdrawn in March and September last year.
Datuk Seri Saravanan also viewed seriously the import ban imposed by the United States Customs and Border Protection Department (US CBP) on rubber-based products manufactured by a subsidiary of Supermax Corporation Bhd. He said the ban was imposed based on investigations of US CBP which found the company had 10 forced labour indicators in the operation of manufacturing company. On Wednesday, the US CBP issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on Supermax Corp and all its subsidiaries after receiving information which claimed the use of forced labour in the manufacturing operation of the company. Following that, the disposable rubber gloves produced by Supermax Corp wholly-owned subsidiaries, Maxter Glove Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, Maxwell Glove Manufacturing Bhd and Supermax Glove Manufacturing, were banned from entering US effective Thursday.
