Oil palm plantation and rubber estate workers today gathered in Parliament angry at Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Bernard Dompok’s statement that they were above the poverty line. “It is a blatant lie and it has been going on for a long time… the fact is misleading and confusing,” slammed M Sugumaran, a coordinator for [...]

Tata, the transnational Indian conglomerate which makes the world famous Tetley teas, has taken 6,500 people hostage through hunger. The hostages are nearly 1,000 tea plantation workers and their families on the Nowera Nuddy Tea Estate in West Bengal, India. Permanently living on the edge of hunger, the workers and their dependants are being pushed [...]

CARAM Asia Critique of the 3rd Global Forum on Migration and Development Athens, Greece 4th-5th November 2009 As governments from around the world convene for the third annual Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) many in the civil society sector continue to question the credibility of the forum as a valid platform capable of [...]

An Indonesian maid who was found beaten in the home of her Malaysian employers died on Monday, after being hospitalized nearly a week, officials said. Her employers, a Malaysian couple from Klang Selangor, about 50 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur, were arrested and face murder charges, according to an Indonesian Embassy official. The victim, Muntik Binti [...]

Everyone wants a peaceful old age, but most people do not think about it when they are young. Yet, in order to be comfortable in old age it is necessary to plan for it soon after a person starts working. SEWA members know this, and yet till recently they did not have a method by [...]

PUNE: We have changed over time and our conditions have improved but society refuses to change. People still view us with suspicion and there is little respect for us, said Saru Waghmare, committee member of Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat ( KKPKP) at the Rotary Club Vocational Excellence awards function at the SM Joshi hall [...]

CHENNAI: More than 400 domestic workers from 25 areas across the city stayed away from work protesting against the government’s inaction in protecting their rights and failure to fix minimum wages. Responding to the one-day strike call given by Penn Thozhilalargal Sangam (PTS), an independent women workers’ union, its activists assembled at Gandhi Statue in [...]

As today marks a day where the international community seeks to recognise the contribution of foreign domestic workers (FDW), CARAM Asia and its members call on governments throughout the world to immediately amend national employment laws to recognise domestic work as work.  The International Solidarity Day with Foreign Migrant Domestic Workers was first launched in [...]

How long will the country tolerate the prolonged slavery of housemaids? The government insists it is difficult and potentially counterproductive to regulate the domestic sub-sector and the House of Representatives has not made the issue a top priority. However, the government and civil society groups have cried out against the inhumane treatment of Indonesian migrant [...]

Siti Hajar’s face — scarred with red blisters and scabs — told of the horror. For the past three years, the 33-year-old Indonesian domestic worker from West Java says she was abused by her Malaysian employer, being beaten, doused with boiling water and caned. In June, the ongoing violence finally landed her in a Kuala [...]