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Coronavirus Malaysia: Top Glove on defensive over treatment of foreign workers as infections spread
- Human resources minister M. Saravanan assails company for ‘terrible’ living conditions of workers and vows stern action
- Company chairman dismisses possibility that its gloves could be contaminated as a result of the mass infections among work force
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Malaysian firm Top Glove, the largest manufacturer of rubber gloves in the world, was scrambling to explain itself on Wednesday as criticism of the company mounted over the emergence of its large foreign workforce as the source of the country’s biggest Covid-19 cluster to date.
A total of 2,684 Top Glove employees – mostly foreign workers – have so far tested positive for the coronavirus. The huge cluster has also raised questions over the possible contamination of its gloves, which are in high demand in hospitals around the globe amid the raging pandemic, though the company on Wednesday dismissed these concerns.
Rights groups said the situation at Top Glove’s factories spoke to a broader trend of neglect in the country towards the welfare of low-paid foreign labourers. The situation bore a distinct resemblance to the mass infections in cramped foreign-worker dormitories in neighbouring Singapore.
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Ismail Sabri, the Malaysian government’s senior minister in charge of security matters, said at a press conference on Wednesday that 27 out of the 28 Top Glove factories that had earlier been ordered shut in phases had already suspended operations, with the 28th scheduled to do so.
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The company has 41 factories in its home country and six other facilities in Thailand, Vietnam and China.
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