Malaysia, Vietnam ministers discuss plan to hire 100,000 workers
Malaysia, Vietnam ministers discuss plan to hire 100,000 workers
Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur
The foreign ministers of Malaysia and Vietnam discussed
Malaysia's desire Friday to recruit as many as 100,000 Vietnamese
workers for the construction and plantation industries.
The recruitment drive is aimed at easing Malaysia's dependency
on workers from neighboring Indonesia following a riot by
Indonesians at a textile factory in January during a drug raid.
Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar and his Vietnamese
counterpart, Nguyen Dy Nien, led their delegations in the two-day
talks, which finish Saturday.
Syed Hamid told reporters that the Malaysian government
wouldn't impose any stringent conditions in recruiting the
Vietnamese workers.
One of Asia's richest countries, Malaysia has nearly 770,000
registered foreign workers, among them 566,000 Indonesians. There
are also hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly from
Indonesia.
Police and soldiers launched a massive operation last week to
clear out illegal immigrants from Indonesia and the Philippines
in the eastern state of Sabah. More than 1,500 have been
deported.
Malaysia revamped its policy on foreign workers after the
January riot and decided to limit workers from different
countries to defined sectors. Indonesians are now confined to
plantation or domestic work.
The government has said it will begin sourcing workers from
other Southeast Asian countries and Central Asia. Unskilled
workers would have to leave after five years.
Syed Hamid also said that Malaysian businessmen investing in
Vietnam faced problems with complex regulations, and that
plantation companies had difficulties securing the long leases on
land needed to recoup their investments.
Nguyen promised to look into the complaints and said that
Vietnam - one of the poorest countries in Asia - looked forward
for greater economic ties with Malaysia.
Malaysia is Vietnam's 13th largest foreign investor, with 94
projects worth more than US$1 billion, mainly in oil and gas,
hotels and manufacturing.