Six Bangladeshi workers who were hired by a Malaysian firm seven months back but were not provided with jobs or salaries lodged a complaint with the Kuala Lumpur police against the company on Tuesday night.

In the complaint, they said they are part of the 161 Bangladeshis who have been forced to pay Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) 6,000 (about Tk 1.5 lakh) to their employer Beaks Construction Sdn Bhd to get their passports back. Their passports were confiscated by the employer upon arriving in Malaysia.

According to the employment contract, they were supposed to get a basic salary of MYR 1,500 (Tk 35,000).

"We have no money to eat. We are provided with only rice and lentils twice a day. We don't even get iftar," Jahirul Islam, one of the six workers, told The Daily Star yesterday.

The other five workers are Alamin Sarker, Ibrahim Khalil, Aulad Hossain, Md Ebrahim and Azizur Rahman. The six are now staying in a hostel at Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur.

Some of the 161 workers filed a complaint with the Subang Jaya labour department against the employer on January 4 with the help of Parti Sosilais Malaysia, a socialist political party. On February 28, it asked the workers to contact the labour department headquarters in Putrajaya.

The labour department headquarters gave two options to the employer: either send back all the workers or look for new employers for them. It also directed Beaks Construction Sdn Bhd to pay the wages of the workers from the day they entered Malaysia.

The company is yet to respond.

"Many workers have left or been forced to leave the hostel to look for jobs. The labour department [in Putrajaya] suggested lodging a complaint with the police to get back our original passports from the employer and filing a claim with the labour department for their arrears," Jahurul said.

According to the Malaysian newspaper Free Malaysia Today, Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail and Human Resources Minister Steven Sim last month said that employers who withhold workers' passports and fail to pay them wages must face legal action under the Immigration Act 1959/63 and the Employment Act 1955.

The comments came after a report that a company in Cheras, which recruited 94 Bangladeshi workers, had failed to provide them with jobs, proper living quarters or adequate food.