KL to tighten rules for foreign workers

KL to tighten rules for foreign workers

Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia plans to tighten rules for hiring foreign labour
because there is an oversupply of migrant workers in the country,
reports said on Thursday.

Human Resources Minister Fong Chan Onn was quoted as saying by
the Star that Malaysia needed one million foreign workers but
there were currently 1.2 million registered with the ministry,
excluding illegal immigrants.

The cabinet is concerned about excess foreign labour and wants
to plug the loopholes that cause the oversupply because it
undermines the hire "locals first" policy, he said.

"We want to tighten the regulations on the hiring of foreign
workers because we fear there are some employers, especially in
the manufacturing sector, who prefer to hire foreign workers ...
rather then employ locals just to save costs," Fong said.

Among the measures identified to make it harder to bring in
foreign workers include abolishing middlemen, requiring employers
to seek ministry's approval before hiring and encouraging
flexible work hours, the report said.

"We want a system that will make it more difficult to hire
foreign labour while increasing our use of capital-intensive
equipment," Fong was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.

"The government has always viewed foreign labour as a
temporary measure in our economy's transformation from being
labour- to capital-intensive."

Malaysia, which is also home to an estimated one million
illegal immigrants, mainly from Indonesia, has long sought to cut
its reliance on foreign labour, most of whom are engaged in low-
paying non-skilled sectors such as construction, plantation and
services.

It introduced harsh new immigration laws in August 2002 and
cracked down on illegal immigrants which saw nearly half a
million of them being repatriated during a four-month amnesty
period in that year.

However, this caused a severe labor shortage in the
construction and plantation sectors, and the government later had
to fast-track approvals for recruiting foreign workers for
certain industries.