Migrant’s Story: Nguyen Nhi, the journey of a young Vietnamese woman migrant worker in Malaysia
Wanted: Vietnamese-speaking person for a job in Malaysia
Nguyen Nhi responded to an advertisement looking for a “Vietnamese-speaking person” for a job in Malaysia in 2018. Since then, she’s been living and working in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia.
I met Nguyen through a common friend living in the same area in Bayan Baru, a township in Penang that was developed to provide a housing area for the adjacent Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone.[1] This is because Nguyen works as a content moderator for Teleperformance – one of the many multinational companies based in the industrial zone.
The journey of a young woman migrant worker
“I was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. After high school, I went to Manila, Philippines to study the English language, through a scholarship from the Don Bosco brothers. After that, I went back to Ho Chi Minh City to continue with my university studies. I stayed and worked in Vietnam for about 2-3 years after my studies”, said Nguyen as she started her story of migration.
Nguyen is a 30-year-old, very tall, and amiable Vietnamese woman. We were conducting the interview by the poolside of her condominium building, Elit Heights Condominium, where she shares a unit with four other roommates.
“But then I felt I wanted to go out of the country and see what else I can do. I’m a very active person. I want to get more experience. I checked online for job openings, and I responded to a job advertisement looking for a Vietnamese-speaking person for a job in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I landed that job in 2018”, she further narrated.
Nguyen worked for two years as a customer service representative for a healthcare company in Kuala Lumpur. Then in 2020, the pandemic struck Malaysia. The company dismissed her, as was the case with many other service industry workers in the country.
“I went back home thinking I’d be spending just a week – which turned into months. I spent the lockdowns stuck in Vietnam. At that time, the COVID-19 transmission in Vietnam was still low, but this worsened in 2021”, she continued.
Nguyen was able to come back to Penang in September 2020, after the lockdowns were lifted in both Vietnam and Malaysia and travel was possible. She was able to land a job in Teleperformance as a content moderator.
A migrant worker in the only BPO company in Penang
Teleperformance is a multinational company headquartered in France. It provides customer acquisition management, customer care, technical support, debt collection, social media services, and other services. It operates in 88 countries and has 420,000 employees worldwide. In 2021, it posted a revenue of Euro 7.115 billion.[2]
In Penang, Teleperformance, or TP Malaysia has been operating since 2017 with 2 sites on the island. It employs more than 2,200 people from 22 countries speaking 25 languages and dialects.[3] Nguyen is among the approximately 300 Vietnamese nationals employed by Teleperformance in Penang.
She further shared, “There’s only one BPO (business process outsourcing) company in Penang, and that’s Teleperformance. My salary at TP is MYR 5,000 monthly. If I work in KL for the same position, I’d get about MYR 5,700 to MYR 6,000. Some employees get a higher salary, depending on their work experience. Because I have a lot of experience already, including working in KL, I received a higher salary than some of my colleagues. But the Team Leaders and Managers get a higher salary than me”.
“It’s very hard to look for another job with a higher salary in Penang. If you move to KL, you’ll get a higher salary, but the cost of living is also very expensive. But here in Penang, life is okay, it’s not busy and I feel comfortable”, Nguyen added.
Indeed, the cost of living on the island of Penang is lower than in KL. For example, Consumer prices are 4.83% lower, rent is 34% lower, and restaurant prices are 22% lower in Penang.[4] If we calculate the figures against Nguyen’s monthly salary of MYR 5,000: Deduct her cost-of-living expenses (MYR 2,082 for a single person without rent )[5] and remittance sent to her family in Vietnam (MYR 1,500 or 30% of her monthly salary), she has savings of about MYR 1,418 monthly.
“There’s also Language[6] and Housing Allowances on top of the basic salary. There’s no Food Allowance, but if you work in the office, the company will provide food or snacks there. The work benefits for foreign workers include maternity leave of 1-2 months, sick leave of 14 days, and vacation leave of 10 days excluding official holidays”, Nguyen further narrated.
These would all seem very nice for Nguyen and thus would make life comfortable for her in Penang. But to be fair, we must consider that she is just one of the thousands employed in Penang and a hundred thousand employed worldwide by Teleperformance. I wondered how other employees worked and lived.
Simple research online revealed there are several complaints against the company, including a class action lawsuit in 2008 against Teleperformance USA (TPUSA) by former and current employees to recover unpaid wages and overtime. According to the Complaints Board website, this is how it happens:
“For example, Teleperformance (TP) requires its employees to show up early to find a workstation and then log on to their system, of course without being paid for that time. Then during the shift, TP logs employees off their system for many different reasons and when an employee is logged out of the system, they are not paid for the time that they are logged out. In addition to these ways of not paying wages and/or overtime for the off-the-clock work, TP delays payments of wages and shorts the paychecks for unexplained reasons. This company is ripping its employees in many ways every day.”[7]
For TP Malaysia, some of the negative complaints include The allowances being a legal scam;[8] Not caring about how the staff feels as long as they are productive;[9] an unprofessional workplace, a strong patronage system, a lack of acknowledgment, and horrible management,[10] among others.
Vietnamese migrants in Malaysia
“We got a big Vietnamese community here in Penang. From TP alone, there are about 300 people. Every special holiday in Vietnam we celebrate together, for example, Tet holiday or Lunar New Year. We cook special food, and we share. We give out ‘lucky money’. At other times, we collect money from among us and buy some things to give out to poor people. Or we go to the home for the senior people to do some chores for them like cleaning the house and giving haircuts. We ask our friends for old clothes to give away”, Nguyen continued. She may be unaware, but Nguyen is part of a long history of migration of Vietnamese nationals to Malaysia.
In 1975 after the Fall of Saigon, the first Vietnamese refugee boat arrived in Malaysia in May 1975 carrying 47 people. A Vietnamese refugee camp was established in 1978 in Pulau Bidong with the assistance of the United Nations, and other refugee camps were also set up later in other regions of Malaysia. But in 1989 many Vietnamese refugees were sent back, violating Malaysia's agreement with the UN to help the refugees. Approximately 5,401 refugees were denied asylum in Malaysia. At a conference in Geneva in June 1989, an agreement was reached stating that refugees arriving past March 1989 were no longer automatically labeled as refugees. As Vietnam began to witness economic growth in the early 1990s, the number of refugee arrivals also quickly dropped. The Pulau Bidong refugee camp was closed in November 1991.[11]
Since the 2000s, Vietnamese migration to Malaysia was labor migration under the Memorandum of Understanding on recruitment, employment, and labor repatriation between the two countries. This Memorandum was first signed on December 2003, again in August 2015, and just recently this year 2022. Since then, more than 100,000 Vietnamese workers have come to work in Malaysia. Currently, there are about 10,000 Vietnamese workers in Malaysia, mainly in the manufacturing, construction, and service sectors.[12] According to Vietnam Ambassador to Malaysia Tran Viet Thai, about 40,000-45,000 Vietnamese people are living, working, and studying in Malaysia.[13]
“Malaysians are very nice people. They are very, very friendly. I will share with you one story: Once, I went out and I saw a mango tree with fruits. And I just asked a Malaysian uncle: Can I have a mango? ‘Ken’ (yes) he replied. I said I will go around first and come back for it later. Then, I realized he added another fruit in the box with the mangoes. He said you can take all of it, no worries. After some days, he chatted with me: Why haven’t you come around to get the fruits anymore? They’re very nice. If you want to ask for something they will give it to you. Malaysians--They’re very open, friendly, and generous. If you stay here, you feel it’s very open and safe”, Nguyen shared when asked how it is living and working in Malaysia.
Nguyen’s experience of living and working in Malaysia is a good one. But sadly, it’s not the same for other Vietnamese migrant workers in Malaysia. To cite some cases reported online:
On 2012 March 23, Malaysian news agencies reported on 69 Vietnamese workers stuck in Malaysia without a visa. Their employer had failed to pay due taxes or conduct visa extension procedures and provided sparse accommodation and meager food rations. The Vietnamese workers mostly come from poor families in the north-central provinces of Ha Tinh and Nghe An.[14]
On 2014 January 6, Malaysian police arrested 108 Vietnamese women forced to work as prostitutes in a local karaoke parlor and a restaurant in Seri Manjung, Perak, Malaysia. The women, aged 16-32, were lured to Malaysia for various jobs but ended up being employed as “guest relations officers”.[15]
Despite these incidents and maybe many more unreported cases, the labor migration of Vietnamese nationals to Malaysia and other countries is still set to continue because of Vietnam’s labor export policy. Every year, the country’s Department of Overseas Labour (DOLAB) under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) sets a target number of workers to send overseas. For 2022, DOLAB has even exceeded its target at 135.56% by sending 122,000 overseas workers in the past 11 months. The biggest employers of Vietnamese workers are Japan (60,105), Taiwan (53,883), South Korea (1,732), and Singapore (1,663).
Moreover, Vietnam expects to send agricultural workers to Australia in the coming years. On March 2022, MOLISA and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Vietnam’s support of the Australian Agricultural Labour Programme. Under the program, about 1,000 Vietnamese nationals will be sent to work in the agricultural sector of Australia each year.
As my interview with Nguyen came to an end, I asked her about her plans for the coming years. And she said “I’m thinking of working in another country because I’m still young. I want to get more experience before I get married. I want to know another country, its environment, its people, and its culture. If I have the opportunity to work in another company, in another country, I will fly.”
Like Nguyen, many Vietnamese nationals are on the path of labor migration. But unlike Nguyen, much more are forced into migration due to poverty and lack of livelihood opportunities in their home country. As long as there are sending countries like Vietnam which treats labor as commodities for export and countries like Malaysia which builds its economy on the exploitation of migrant labor, the path is a vicious cycle.
Footnotes:
Shahril Cheah (October 2010). "Penang's development still depends on the PDC". Penang Monthly
Teleperformance, 2021 Annual Results, February 17, 2022
https://www.teleperformance.com/en-us/locations/malaysia-site/malaysia/
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Malaysia&country2=Malaysia&city1=Kuala+Lumpur&city2=Penang&tracking=getDispatchComparison
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Penang
https://www.unicsc.org/Resources/FAQs/when-is-a-language-allowance-p.htm
https://www.complaintsboard.com/teleperformance-or-calltech-communications-teleperformance-class-action-lawsuit-c86389
Review of TP Malaysia: https://goo.gl/maps/FJx7ijRWSdSv9GFw9
Review of TP Malaysia: https://goo.gl/maps/LEzXhdjUxT22K9pf9
Review of TP Malaysia: https://goo.gl/maps/kwoSGphhMkUiDBz66
Vietnamese People in Malaysia, Wikipedia, retrieved 12/10/22
Dan Tri International News, “Vietnam sends over 122,000 workers abroad in 11 months”, dated December 1, 2022, retrieved 12/10/22
Overseas Vietnamese, “Information on mechanisms and policies of state to Vietnamese community in Malaysia”, dated 08/11/22, retrieved 12/10/22
Thanh Nhien News, “Malaysia extends visa for stranded Vietnamese workers”, dated March 23, 2012
Thanh Nhien News, “Over 100 Vietnamese women rescued from brothels”, dated January 6, 2014
