PETALING JAYA: Experts warn that more Malaysians may have to work overseas as migrant workers and maids if the economy does not improve, following the detention and release of 47 Malaysians duped into working in Cambodia.Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said this included Malaysians working overseas as legal and even illegal workers if the economy worsens.“We have to take grim lessons from some regional countries which were very well-to-do compared to us half a century ago. They now have to send many of their nationals overseas to work, including to Malaysia,” he said.Oh said Malaysians selling their labour overseas was nothing new, citing the exit of many who lost their mining jobs in the 1970s who left to work menial or semi-skilled jobs in the US and Europe.

“What is surprising is only that it happened in Cambodia, which is considered to be lagging in development compared to Malaysia,” he said.He believes it is only a matter of time before a large number of Malaysians end up working as maids or low-skilled workers overseas.He added however that people were free to migrate elsewhere to improve their personal well-being.“If the economy grows, the outflow (of labour) will naturally drop. As we create more high-paying jobs by liberalising the economy, people will stay,” he said.Meanwhile, Patrick Ziegenhain, an expert in Southeast Asian regional economics, said there were already many Malaysians working as immigrant workers in countries like Australia and Korea.

“Many people in Malaysia make a sharp distinction between the ‘original Malaysians’ who do not do cheap and hard labour in plantations, etc, and the ‘immigrants’ who do this,” he said, adding that this was a negative development.“Malaysians tend to look down on other allegedly less developed countries like Indonesia – in this case, Cambodia. Why is it so impossible to imagine that Malaysians would become immigrant workers there?”Madeline Berma, an economist who specialises in rural development, said this was a globalisation phenomenon.“Among the features of globalisation are international migration, human trafficking, borderless work, and free flow of resources including labour,” she added.She said the Malaysians who were stuck in Cambodia had not received proper information about their employers before leaving.

“They took up the offer to work with limited information on the employers. They took the risk without understanding the legal implications,” she said.She also noted that the majority of the detainees were from rural Sarawak, showing that rural youths were particularly vulnerable to human trafficking and exploitation.She suggested that schools and NGOs hold awareness programmes to educate youths about human trafficking.The 47 Malaysians were picked up by police in Phnom Penh after reportedly being hoodwinked by a recruitment agency which promised them high-paying jobs.They were released by the Cambodian government following negotiations with Wisma Putra.