"Nepalis trafficked into Malaysia via Thailand,"

With Malaysia suspending the intake of foreign workers in sectors other than plantation and security for the past 10 months, human traffickers have increasingly routed Nepali migrant workers through Thailand to enter Malaysia illegally.

The workers are first taken to Thailand on visit visas, then trafficked across the border by boat over the Golok River into Malaysia’s Kelantan state. Despite border tightening and mandatory immigration checks at Rantau Panjang, traffickers continue to misuse the crossing, officials at Nepal’s embassy in Kuala Lumpur said...

Recruitment agencies in Malaysia are also complicit, embassy officials said, as undocumented workers come without legal liabilities.

Malaysia has not accepted new workers from Nepal and other source countries since May/June last year, citing an excess quota. Only the security sector has been reopened to Nepalis in recent weeks. New recruitments in the manufacturing and services sectors, where 62 percent and 29 percent of Nepalis in Malaysia respectively, are employed, remain closed...