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Mataram. Five migrant workers who recently returned from Malaysia have filed a report with authorities after being conned out of millions of rupiah on every step of their journey to seek legitimate work abroad.

The five men filed their case on Tuesday with the Agency for the Placement and Protection of Migrant Workers (BP3TKI) in Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara, against the placement agency that sent them abroad, Andromeda Graha.

Diky Fahmi, 21, one of the men, said their ordeal began in August when a recruitment officer from Andromeda promised them a job at a food processing plant in Malaysia, with the catch that they would each have to pay a Rp 5 million ($555) departure fee up front.

Diky said what further piqued their suspicion was when they were placed in a hotel purportedly for training, but never received any training.

“The next thing we knew, we were told by another official that in exchange for securing our work permits, the agency would be taking 1,900 ringgit ($612) each from our wages,” he said.

When they arrived in Batam to make the ferry crossing to Malaysia, however, the workers realized there were no work permits.

Diky said they were taken into the country illegally by a smuggler who demanded 900 ringgit from each of them, again to be cut from their future wages.

Once in Malaysia, they were taken to Kilang Getah, where instead of being placed in the food processing industry they were put to work in a factory molding rubber parts for the auto industry.

“The work was too hard and too hot, and wasn’t at all what we’d expected,” said Irwan Hadi, 20, another of the men.

Even then, the men only earned 900 ringgit, of which 300 ringgit was deducted each month to defray expenses and cover their meals. They said they also lived in constant fear of police raids because of their illegal status.

“Finally we’d had enough,” Irwan said. “We scraped together our own money and paid our own way back home.”

Muhammad Soleh, an activist with the Koslata Foundation, which campaigns for migrant workers’ rights, said the men’s ordeal verged on human trafficking but was not an uncommon experience for migrant workers.

“This is the method that these kinds of placement agencies use. It always escapes the attention of the authorities,” he said when filing the report on behalf of the workers with the BP3TKI.

“And now the agency is demanding that they pay the Rp 5 million departure fee and the other costs that it claims it incurred on their behalf.”

Soleh said the workers’ complaint against the agency was for failing to place them in jobs as initially promised.

“We’re not pushing the human trafficking charge because at this point there’s nothing to show that they did anything more than fail to abide by the regulations for placing the workers in jobs,” he said.

There was no response from the company.