By Pete Pattisson
Monday 21 November 2016 03.00 GMT
It is eight o’clock in the industrial area of Port Klang, an hour’s drive west of Kuala Lumpur, and the entrance to the Samsung factory is heaving with workers. As hundreds of men and women pour out of the factory gates into the clammy air, hundreds more file in to start the night shift.
Outside the factory gates, those who have finished their shift crouch on the pavement in the evening heat, their faces reflecting the glow of their mobile phones as they wait for the fleet of buses that will take them back to their accommodation. Among them is 18-year-old Aakash Bhandari, who sits slumped on the side of the road, exhausted after 12 hours on his feet.
Bhandari is just one of the 2,000 people working at this Samsung factory, a non-stop operation churning out microwave ovens sold to consumers across the world. There are an estimated 2.1 million documented migrant workers like Bhandari in Malaysia, many of them hired through third-party labour supply companies who recruit foreign workers from Nepal, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh to drive Malaysia’s industrial boom.
It is eight o’clock in the industrial area of Port Klang, an hour’s drive west of Kuala Lumpur, and the entrance to the Samsung factory is heaving with workers. As hundreds of men and women pour out of the factory gates into the clammy air, hundreds more file in to start the night shift.
Outside the factory gates, those who have finished their shift crouch on the pavement in the evening heat, their faces reflecting the glow of their mobile phones as they wait for the fleet of buses that will take them back to their accommodation. Among them is 18-year-old Aakash Bhandari, who sits slumped on the side of the road, exhausted after 12 hours on his feet.
Bhandari is just one of the 2,000 people working at this Samsung factory, a non-stop operation churning out microwave ovens sold to consumers across the world. There are an estimated 2.1 million documented migrant workers like Bhandari in Malaysia, many of them hired through third-party labour supply companies who recruit foreign workers from Nepal, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh to drive Malaysia’s industrial boom.
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