Crisis-hit Asian nations move to expel foreign workers

Crisis-hit Asian nations move to expel foreign workers

Once in great demand, foreign workers are being shipped back home as Asian countries feel the impact of the financial crisis engulfing the region. Mohan Srilal reports for Inter Press Service.

SINGAPORE: For years, armies of foreign laborers who take on jobs from building skyscrapers to cleaning house, have flocked to Southeast Asia's newly rich countries in search of better paying work.

But as the region's currency and economic jitters take their toll, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are moving to discourage or even reverse this flow of people from other parts of Asia.

Hardest hit by an economic slowdown since July, Thailand is preparing a plan within three months to fire overseas laborers, mostly from Indochina, and replace them with Thais in a bid to ease unemployment pressure at home.

Singaporeans and Malaysians are wondering how long they can hang on to the luxury of keeping foreign domestic help, as their governments tighten rules for their employment.

Singapore, a city state of 3.5 million people, has 100,000 overseas born maids that are part of a total of 450,000 foreign workers. One in seven households here has a maid, most likely from Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar or Sri Lanka.

Neighboring Malaysia has 140,000 foreign maids from these countries and some 2 million foreign workers, of whom 800,000 are illegal. Malaysians have been asked to drastically cut their unskilled labor force, which officials call a drain on financial resources and a contributor to the current account deficit through the earnings they send home.

In a recent editorial, the Malaysian daily New Straits Times said: "Malaysians will no doubt support such a policy, for clearly we are now in the throes of being swamped by foreign workers, bringing with them social, economic, political and security problems for the country."

Once welcomed for their willingness to work, often at pay rates lower than usual, foreign workers in Southeast Asia are being told it's about to go home.

The trend underlines the risks that go with being a temporary worker in a foreign land, one whose work is useful but who is among the first to go when prosperous economic times are threatened.

In the months since Asia's currency crisis began in July, foreign workers have increasingly been transformed from people who help plug growing labor shortages to those who snatch jobs away from suffering locals.

Likewise, governments have long turned a blind eye to illegal workers in countries like Thailand and Malaysia until now.

Reports say 6,000 Indonesians were detained in late November in a crackdown on illegal workers in Malaysia. Likewise, labor activists say foreign construction workers, who make up 70 percent of registered migrant laborers, have begun to be retrenched in once bustling work sites in Malaysia.

When the currency crunch first hit Malaysia, the government froze the hiring of all foreign maids but revoked it under pressure from maid recruiting agencies. Since then, the Malaysian government has moved to tighten laws on hiring foreign maids.

Human resources minister Lim Ah Lek is drafting an amendment to the Employment Act of 1995 that would require employers to retrench foreign workers first. "This amendment is also part of our measures to stop dependency on foreign workers and to reduce the outflow of our money," he said.

Activists say that even laborers with valid work permits risk being laid off. Aegile Fernandez of the non government agency Tenaganita says that after being laid off, many workers are unable to go home because their documents are held by employers.

International trade minister Rafidah Aziz has also warned companies not to employ illegal foreign workers, saying those who do were "doing a disservice to the country".

To discourage the hiring of foreign maids, the Singapore government in November announced an increase in the monthly levy due from those with foreign domestic help. The levy was hiked by nearly US$10 to US$220, will henceforth will be increased yearly, the labor ministry said.

Singapore's move to go slow on hiring foreign domestic workers is unlikely to come easy, though.

As debate rages on whether working parents should use child care centers instead of hiring maids, many working mothers have written to newspapers and rung up talkback radio shows to complain about the standards and steep cost of child care.

If Singapore wants its highly qualified women to continue to work, then it must provide better child care, they argue. "There are great differences between employing a maid and placing children in child care," reader Siew Ngung Chia wrote to the Straits Times newspaper. "The cost of sending two children to a child care center can be a major financial burden."

Child care services cost from $222 to $382 a month, while one can employ a foreign maid for a monthly salary as little as $115, plus the government levy.

"Working parents will find that employing a maid is value for money because she can also help them in housework," Siew points out. The maid's presence allows the mother to spend time with her children after work, instead of doing housework, she added.

For now, Singaporeans are not convinced that employing a foreign worker is a drain on the economy. And since the Singapore dollar has not been battered like the other currencies, they still believe that a wealthy nation can afford to pay others to do work viewed as drudgery.

The government has also increased the levy for unskilled foreign workers to $300 per month, even as it lowered the levy for highly skilled foreigners to work here.

The crackdown on foreign labor in Malaysia and Singapore is bound to weigh heavily on Indonesia, where financial instability forced the government to seek a bailout package led by the International Monetary Fund of more than $30 billion.

Loss of jobs overseas could hurt a key source of dollars for Indonesia the $2.5 billion that its workers, mostly in Malaysia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, remit annually.

Likewise, the job picture at home is not the best. Indonesian illegal workers in the Middle East were sent home recently, adding to the number of people searching for work. Some 50 firms have also sought government approval to fire more than 10,000 workers.

-- IPS