While many would welcome the move of resuming the recruitment of foreign workers from Bangladesh, at the same time, there is real fear that the same vicious cycle of forced labour and depressing wages for Malaysians will repeat after no safe guards were announced prior.
Bringing in more foreign workers must be seen as a catalyst for better worker protection in the country.
What these workers do not understand is the basic concept of forced labour and how their rights must be protected under International Labour Organization (ILO) standards.
Foreign Workers must be educated about possible exploitation so that they voice out when there is non-compliance of working standards and elements of forced labour.
These matters must be emphasized at the source country, has it been done? This must be done before these workers are brought in.
Cheap foreign Labour
Many of the foreign workers are employed in construction, agriculture, low-end services also known as the 3D sector “dirty, dangerous and difficult” jobs.
Wages are low and many Malaysians shy away from these jobs. Now the issue is the influx of cheap foreign workers which exerts downward pressure on the skill composition of the country’s human capital. Thus Malaysia’s aim of achieving 35% of high-skilled workers in the labour force under the “shared prosperity” program, will only be a pipedream.
Thus the never ending influx of cheap foreign labour will eventually defeat the country’s aim to become a high income economy. It would also depress real wages and the employers and investors will focus on labour intensive industries and low cost businesses. Among Malaysian workers this will increase pockets of poverty and illness and will manifest in many other social ills.
Over the years the Employers and the Government have shown an inclination to cheap labour. Due to this, real wages have not gone up.
Even Minimum wage has been stagnant at RM1,200 since the departure of the PH Government. It would have been RM1,400 now if PH was governing as we had promised and carried the yearly increments of RM100 as promised in our Manifesto.
The over dependence of foreign workers must be phased out over time. That’s why the PH Government introduced the Multi-tier model but it’s been postponed again by the Government. The multi-tier model has been a success in countries like Singapore.
The model controls the influx of foreign workers on need basis and the need for human intervention is done away wherein corruption lies.
Thousands of overstaying foreign workers lavishing away in Depos
I must raise this again; we have thousands of foreigners in our Immigration and police depots. These foreign workers are over stayers caught and or arrested by the relevant authorities. With the presence of these Foreign labour, why do we keep them there to be deported and bring in thousands more?
With non-compliance by employers, the cycle is bound to repeat again and a large chunk of these workers might also end up in the depot. The problem is never addressed and will never be solved.
These foreigners in the depot have also been in our country longer; they know our culture and language and will not let exploitation of labour happen.
Malaysia should also consider other countries like Thailand, India, Nepal and Philippines and not just always choose Bangladesh.
There must also be strict SOPs when we hire foreigners to ensure none of them belong to any terrorist groups or are involved in terrorism. This could be detrimental to our nation.