KL lifts freeze on foreign maids

KL lifts freeze on foreign maids

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysia has been forced to lift its recently imposed freeze on the intake of foreign maids due to the high demand for domestic helpers, reports said yesterday.

"We will allow employers to recruit maids from Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines," deputy Home Minister Tajol Rosli Ghazali was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times news paper.

"We have to lift the ban because we have received many appeals from working mothers on the difficulties they have to endure if the freeze remained," he said.

Kuala Lumpur decided last month to freeze the recruitment of all unskilled foreign labor which now accounts for 1.7 million people, or 8.3 percent, of its population. The measure was to back Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's warning that a high dependence on foreign workers could threaten the economy.