KL to lift restrictions on hiring RI workers

KL to lift restrictions on hiring RI workers

Agencies, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia will lift restrictions on the hiring of Indonesian workers to plug labor shortages in the construction and manufacturing sectors, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on Tuesday.

The move came just over a year after the government clamped down on the recruitment of Indonesians, allowing them to work only as maids and plantation workers after recent riots.

It said it would look to Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines and India to supply the labor market.

Abdullah, who heads the cabinet committee on foreign workers, said there was now one million non-Malaysian workers in the country, but demand for Indonesian labor had surged in the construction, infrastructure development and manufacturing sectors.

"We need a lot of workers. Demand for houses is increasing. The industry is requesting us to bring in Indonesian workers. They are skillful and they have a common language with Malaysia," he told reporters.

"We did not want them before because they were too many of them so we diversified the source of countries, but because of the demand we are taking them back again."

The committee would submit a report to cabinet on the matter for approval, he added.

The labor shortage was partly caused by a crackdown last year after Malaysia in August imposed harsh new penalties, including caning, for illegal immigrants.

Some 468,000 illegal immigrants had earlier returned home voluntarily during a four-month amnesty period, almost half of them construction workers.

Malaysian builders in November warned they may lose 1.2 billion ringgit (US$315 million) in late delivery penalty charges because of a severe labor shortage caused by the expulsion of mainly Indonesian illegal immigrants, who made up 70 percent of workers in the sector.

Abdullah also said that foreigners planning to work in Malaysia will have to undergo medical checkups to stop them from bringing in infectious diseases.

The move follows reports of Indonesian maids who were certified healthy back home but were found to be suffering from illnesses such as typhoid fever after they arrived in Malaysia.

Abdullah said foreign workers would soon be required to undergo checkups immediately after entering this Southeast Asian nation. They would be deported if discovered to be sick, he said.

"We don't want diseases from abroad being brought into the country," Abdullah was quoted as saying by the national news agency, Bernama.

Abdullah said details of the plan, such as the agencies that would conduct the checkups, would be announced later. It was not immediately clear when the measures would take effect.