This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on August 3, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Bestinet Sdn Bhd, which has come under scrutiny in connection with an allegedly exploitative labour recruitment system, has dismissed a news report claiming it had contacted government officials in Nepal and Malaysia to discuss a recent decision by Nepal to ban its citizens from working in Malaysia.

“What we actually said was that we met with the immigration attache at the Malaysian embassy in Nepal who advised us not to contact Nepalese government officials, as the ban on workers seeking employment in Malaysia was a government-to-government matter and had to be discussed and resolved at that level,” the company said in a media statement yesterday.

Bestinet was responding to an article published by The Star on Wednesday, which reported that a meeting between the company and Nepalese officials to reverse the ban had yet to yield any result.

“We have written to the publication to demand a retraction and apology,” Bestinet said.

The daily’s report was also denied by the embassy of Nepal, which said there had been no contact with Bestinet “for a meeting or discussion whatsoever”.

On Saturday, The Star reported that Nepal had decided to stop its citizens from working in Malaysia with immediate effect as it was unhappy with “restrictive” immigration requirements that included security and medical vetting of workers by Bestinet, a private company.

The immigration requirement is part of the government’s Foreign Workers Centralised Management System, rolled out on June 15, 2014 and outsourced to Bestinet.