KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 29 — Modern slavery, as unbelievable as it sounds, exists in 2022.
It is described as severe exploitation of people for personal or commercial gain, and its prevalence — in the form of job scams which promises high wages for simple work overseas — has only increased over the past year post-Covid-19, which destroyed thousands, if not millions of lives and livelihoods and forced people to take risks in order to make ends meet and support their loved ones through the hardest of times.
The alarm in Malaysia has now rung loud and clear after a 23-year-old Malaysian citizen named Goi Zhen Feng became Malaysia’s first recorded death from overseas job scams.
He died on May 11 at the Mae Sot Hospital, in Mae Sot, Thailand, a city in the west of Thailand that shares borders with Myanmar.
Goi, a teacher in training, was supposedly held in Myawaddy, Myanmar, which borders Mae Sot. According to his doctor who treated him at Mae Sot Hospital, Goi was severely abused and beaten before being dumped at the hospital in April under the fake name “Mun Jun Hong” and a fake passport number, making authorities unable to contact his family back in Ipoh, Perak.
His body was buried at the Si Racha cemetery in Chonburi province under the fake name.
This has set an urgent tone in Putrajaya to end these scams and bring back the hundreds of other Malaysians who have fallen prey to these syndicates before they end up like Goi.
But who runs these syndicates? What do they want…
