KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 17 — The Home Ministry has identified five key factors for why Malaysians are still being tricked into forced-labour situations by job syndicates in Cambodia despite years of warning.
In a written reply to Padang Serai MP Datuk Azman Nasrudin, the ministry said Malaysians were still being deceived into travelling abroad by syndicates offering fake employment.
The five factors the ministry provided were:
1. Enticing pay for easy work
Many are drawn to purported job offers that promise lucrative monthly salaries of US$1,000 to US$3,000 (over RM4,000 to over RM12,000) for supposedly easy roles such as customer service officer, investment officer, or call centre operator.
Those facing financial pressures, the ministry said, find these offers especially tempting and difficult to resist.
2. Low awareness of the syndicates’ changing tactics
Despite numerous reports on such scams, many Malaysians believe the networks have been dismantled or fail to keep up with their evolving strategies, which include using new company names, targeting different countries, and recruiting through social media.
3. Local involvement worsens the problem
The ministry noted that most victims were deceived by fellow Malaysians acting as recruitment agents, with potential victims more likely to trust offers made by people from their own community.
4. Failure to perform due diligence
Many victims failed to conduct basic background checks before accepting overseas job offers.
Some were fooled by fake documents, including counterfeit visas that appeared authentic, and did not verify the legitimacy of the offer with the Foreign Ministry or Human Resources Ministry.
5. Economic pressures and desperation
Unemployment make young people, fresh graduates, and retrenched workers especially susceptible to exploitation.
Scam syndicates exploit this desperation by offering to handle all arrangements, including flight tickets and visa applications.
Apart from providing these five factors, the Home Ministry also confirmed that the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007 can be used to prosecute syndicates involved in such cases.
The law applies even when the trafficking occurs overseas, as long as Malaysia is the place where the exploitation began, served as a transit point, or was the intended destination.
