17,000 foreigners

17,000 foreigners hired for estates

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): Malaysia plans to hire slightly more than 17,000 foreigners to help alleviate the serious shortage of workers on its rubber and oil palm plantations, the Business Times newspaper said yesterday.

The paper quoted Malaysia's Rural Development Minister Annuar Musa as saying he got a Malaysian cabinet mandate to recruit cheap labor on a government-to-government basis with countries in the region.

He said he would make an official visit to Indonesia to sign an agreement on the matter and by month's end would have contacted his counterparts from countries in the region.

"The entire recruitment exercise is expected to be completed by 1995," Annuar said. "By this time, operations at these plantations will be back to normal."

Rubber and oil palm plantations are operating at half capacity due to the labor shortage. News reports said earlier this year about 30 percent of Malaysia's 1.8 million rubber trees stood untapped because of it.

Malaysia has an estimated 430,000 registered foreign workers and another 200,000 who are in the country illegally, according to Home Ministry figures released in January.

Most of the workers are from Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines.