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.