Malaysia's online news agency Bernama.com reported on Monday that the demonstrating workers, who had gone to Malaysia in March this year, were demonstrating because they were not given jobs and were kept in deplorable living conditions in hostels.

The aggrieved migrant workers demonstrated for several hours alleging that each of them was made to pay between 10,000 and 14,000 ringgit, which is equivalent to Tk 2 lakh to Tk 2.8 lakh, to travel to Malaysia ostensibly to join already arranged jobs, but on arrival they found themselves being victimised in a foreign land, said Mohamed Anis Miah, a representative of the workers.

"When we arrived, we were placed in a shelter with no walls for 25 days before we were moved to an overcrowded dormitory," Bernama.com quoted Anis as saying.

About 300 Bangladeshis were forced to live in the hostel, the accommodation capacity of which was for 50 people only, Anis added.

Anis also said the workers signed contracts which had promised them jobs paying 780 ringgit or Tk 16,000 a month with free accommodations.

"Now, there are not even 100 of us with jobs!" he said.

The ill-fated workers lodged police reports against the local employment agent, Anis said adding that they hope the Malaysian government will help them return to their home country.

The state's deputy immigration department chief went to the demonstration on Sunday and arranged a meeting between the workers and the employment agent's representative.

An official of a human rights organisation in Malaysia yesterday told The Daily Star that the agent assured the workers of arranging jobs for them within a week of the meeting.

"The employment agent has been giving such assurances since our arrival," the human rights organisation official however quoted a disgruntled Bangladeshi worker as saying.

The New Straits Times, a Malaysian daily, in mid-June ran a report describing a horrifying situation of another group of about 300 Bangladeshi workers, prior to their employment in an electronic goods manufacturing factory.

The men had gone to Malaysia to work in the factory three months before the New Straits Times report, but soon after their arrival, the agent allegedly crammed all 300 of them into a house for a month while waiting for their work permits, the daily reported.

They were later moved to different hostels as they began working in the factory. The story of their month long ordeal would not even see the light of day if officers from the Malaysian Centre for Services and Counselling for Foreign Workers would not talk to them while visiting the workers' new hostels during a research trip there, according to The New Straits Times report.

"When I saw them, they had marks on their backs as if they had been caned," the counselling centre's Vice-chairman Amir Ibrahim said.

One of the workers, known only as Al-Amin, claimed that the Bangladeshi workers were given rotten food and were beaten if they complained.

"They pulled our hair, punched and kicked us. When some of us fell ill, they would not even give us medical treatment," the 25-year-old was quoted as saying.

The workers also claimed that they were paid only 100 ringgit or Tk 2000 for two months' work while the legal minimum wage for foreign workers in Malaysia is 500 ringgit a month, which is equivalent to US$ 147.

A police report was lodged in connection with the alleged mistreatment of the Bangladeshi workers, and the authorities are investigating the employers, the newspaper said.

According to Malaysia's current rules, outsourcing companies, which hire Bangladeshi workers through recruiting agencies in Bangladesh, must provide accommodations for the workers for free and must pay them the full monthly salaries, as promised in the job contract, for the first three months even if the outsourcing companies fail to give the workers work to do in that period.

If the outsourcing companies fail to provide jobs for the workers in the first 3 months of their arrival in the country, the companies must make arrangements to send the workers back home, the rules stipulate.