In a raid on Saturday, officials from Malaysia’s Selangor state immigration department rescued 105 female foreign domestic workers, including four Cambodians, from a recruitment agency in Port Klang where they were allegedly being held against their will.

Selangor Immigration Department staff could not provide details, but Malaysian media said immigration officers also arrested 12 agency employees, including three Cambodians, and charged them with detaining the workers in abusive conditions.

Selangor Immigration Director Amran Ahmad told Malaysian media that the agency had transported the migrants to local houses to work as maids each day and confined them in the agency building at night, failing to pay them for six months and limiting their food rations.

Irene Fernandez, director of female workers’ rights NGO Tenaganita, explained that Cambodian agency employees were responsible for managing the captive Cambodian maids.

“They used their own nationals to control them,” she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justine Drennan at [email protected]