Govt urged to reconsider foreign labour freeze
Malaysiakini
Oct  4, 2006
Alwin Yap

The latest move by the government to freeze the foreign labour intake has a wide-ranging economic repercussions and should be reconsidered.

Consumers group advocate Jacob George also questioned if the government had conducted a thorough study prior to introducing the ban.

He was responding to a media report in Utusan Malaysia yesterday which quoted deputy Human Resources Minister Abdul Rahman Bakar as saying that the freeze was implemented to protect employment opportunities for local workers.

The deputy minister added that the government was also worried that the country had become too dependant on foreign labour. He also raised concerns over the 600,000 undocumented migrant workers in the country.

George, who is the president of Consumers' Association of Subang and Shah Alam, Selangor (CASSA), said Abdul Rahman’s statement was inconsistent with the present situation where there is a labour shortage of between 800,000 and 1 million workers in the country.

He also asked if the policy, as announced by Abdul Rahman, had been consulted at the cabinet level.

“Was there a joint consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture or with Ministry of International Trade and Industry?” he asked.

“A lot of companies are already bringing in foreign labour. They’ve paid for the workers visas. They’ve invested in machinery that need these workers to run it and are expected to start business operations soon with these allocated staff,” he said, adding that the deputy minister’s statement had caused anxiety among foreign investors also.

Labour gap

George also suggested that the government should give the 600,000 undocumented migrants work permits so that they could be absorbed into the workforce.

“Otherwise, how do you fix the labour gap when this freeze on foreign labour starts?” he said.

“If you see the 9th Malaysia Plan, you’ll see that many projects are labour intensive. We need all the hands we can get to develop the various sectors in this country,” he said.

George also said the labour shortage could not be alleviated by a local workforce as they shunned the manual labour required in the construction, agricultural and manufacturing sectors.