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.