KUALA LUMPUR (MALAYSIA) – Yubaraj Khadka, an employee at Top Glove Corp in Malaysia, clicked two snaps in Map of fellow workers crowding into the factory owned by the world’s biggest medical latex gloves manufacturer.
In spite of the raging pandemic, workers were lined up less than a metre apart to have their temperature checked before beginning the shift. Although the firm mandates that masks and gloves are to be worn, Khadka said social distancing was not enforced outside the factory.
Fear of losing his job forced Khadka not to directly lodge a complaint to the management. Instead, he sent the photos to a workers’ rights activist in his native Nepal, who in turn sent them to the company and the Malaysian authorities without naming him.
However, on Sept. 23, Top Glove sacked the 27-year-old for sharing the pictures. In its termination letter, the firm said it had identified him as the one who clicked the photos from CCTV footage of workers entering the factory.
Now, after three months, the factories and workers’ dormitories of Top Glove have become the largest cluster of the virus in Malaysia with more than 5,000 cases and 94% of them are overseas workers, said the health ministry on December 1.
Top Glove said on Wednesday that as many as 5,147 employees in its Klang factory have tested positive for the virus.
The Malaysian government on November 23 ordered the shuttering of Top Glove factories in stages so that workers can be screened for COVID. Earlier this month, the labour department said it would file charges against the glove manufacturer over its workers’ accommodation, which was cramped and ill-ventilated.
“There was no one-metre distancing. That’s what I wanted to show,” Khadka said from Nepal, where he is job hunting. “Even at the factory, after the first few months (of infections in Malaysia), the social distancing markers were thrown out.”
He had to go back to Nepal by shelling out $400 for the flight and another $70 for a coronavirus test, which returned negative.
In a statement, the firm said last Monday that it had introduced temperature checks and regular sanitisation of its factories, offices, transport vehicles and dormitories when the pandemic broke out and it is in the process of improving accommodation facilities for employees. “Our 21,000 workforce is the backbone and foundation of the company and crucial to our mission of ensuring safe human protection globally,” the company said.
It also said that there have been no casualties linked to the virus. During its financial results call on Wednesday that 94% of workers tested are now fit to return to work.