RI refugees allowed work in Malaysia

RI refugees allowed work in Malaysia

Malaysia, which cracked down on illegal foreign workers earlier this year, will let more than 40,000 refugees from Indonesia and Myanmar work legally to help ease a labour shortage, a minister said on Tuesday.

The unprecedented move follows an exodus of nearly 400,000 illegal foreign workers at the start of the year under an amnesty from prosecution that caused some acute shortages of unskilled labour.

"We will absorb refugees that are registered with the UNHCR to be part of foreign worker source," Home Minister Azmi Khalid told reporters after a Cabinet committee meeting.

"This will reduce the need to bring in foreign workers."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which last month mooted the idea, welcomed the decision.

"It makes a lot of practical sense and it also demonstrates Malaysia's humanitarian dedication," Volker Turk, representative of the UN refugee agency in Malaysia, told Reuters.

Malaysia is home to an estimated 60,000 refugees, but just over 40,000 are registered with the UNHCR.

"We are still in the process of registering the rest," Turk said.

Of the total, about 20,000 are from Indonesia's Aceh, 10,000 are members of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority and another 10,000 are members of other Myanmar minority ethnic groups.

Malaysia views refugees as illegal immigrants since the country has yet to sign the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which has been ratified by 145 nations.

Last year, Malaysia agreed to let the Rohingyas stay temporarily. The Rohingyas came in the 1990s from Myanmar, but Yangon disputes their origin and refuses to let them return.

Malaysia relies on foreign unskilled labour to do dirty, poorly paid work that locals shun, but the number of illegal immigrants, estimated at 800,000 or more ahead of the amnesty, caused the government a fiscal and administrative headache.

Their sudden departure earlier this year hit a range of industries such as the construction and plantation sectors, leading to concerns among economists about the potential impact on economic growth and on inflation through higher wages. -- Reuters