Umno leader Hamidi implicated in fleecing Nepali workers with visa fees

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi FILE PHOTO
Ahmad Zahid Hamidi FILE PHOTO

Investigative journalists from Nepal have implicated former deputy prime minister and home minister, and current Umno leader, Zahid Hamidi in a scandal that saw a firm he was linked to extort fees from incoming Nepali migrant workers.

The former deputy PM began to outsource migrant visa processing to a private firm, Ultra Kirana Sdn Bhd, some five years ago, according to a report in The Nepali Times. The new regulations forced Nepali migrants to apply for visas through the private firm, which began charging every Malaysia-bound worker Rs3,200 (RM190/US$45) for their services.

Prior to outsourcing these services to the private firm, migrant workers had been able to apply for visas independently for just Rs700 (RM40/US$10).

Agency fees for incoming workers, a source of cheap labor in Malaysia, added up, and The Nepali Times states that between September 2013 and April 2018, when Hamidi left his post, more than 600,000 workers had seen their applications funneled through Ultra Kirana, which collected more than Rs1.95 billion (RM115 million/US$28.3 million).

Unsatisfied with the degree to which they were allegedly fleecing guest workers, the Malaysian government then found a new, novel way to extort even more money from Nepali migrants, the newspaper alleges: Biometric testing.

In 2015, Hamidi, at the time both deputy PM and home minister, engaged the services of another private firm to perform medical tests on incoming workers. That company, Bestinet Sdn Bhd, just so happened to be run by his brother-in-law, Amin Bin Abdul Nor. Hamidi’s brother, as well as the former Malaysian Environment Minister Ajmi Khalid, were also major shareholders in the firm.

You can probably guess where this is going: Tests that workers could do in government hospitals to ensure a clean bill of health at a low cost now had to be carried out at privately-owned, and Bestinet-affiliated, biometric screening centers. Each worker was charged Rs4,500 for the test (RM265/US$65), and by the time Hamidi left office, Bestinet managed to collect over Rs1 billion (RM60 million/US$14.5 million) from more than 200,000 Nepali workers.

Seeing they had a cash cow in their midst, The Nepali Times charges that Malaysian officials began to introduce even more migrant fees, all funneled through companies connected to high-ranking politicians.

They began to charge fees for collecting forms; another one when you dropped it off; there was a charge to scan a passport; another one to fingerprint you; and an additional fee to upload all of this data online, all from workers whose sweat and cheap labor would soon benefit Malaysia in other ways.

Investigators estimate that when all is said and done, over US$450 million was collected off the backs of Nepali workers in sundry fees and “services,” with the profits allegedly divided among “powerful Malay politicians” and their Nepali cohorts.

Nepal’s Labor Ministry is now looking for reform, both abroad and among complicit bureaucrats at home, and hoping that the process of visa issuing will return to the purview of Malaysia’s Immigration Department as before.

Meanwhile, Hamidi is now the leader of Umno, a party alleged to have endemic, deep-rooted corruption within their ranks. Many see this as having been the nails in the coffin that lost them the recent elections.



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