QUICK TAKE: When industries say they don’t have any need for 1.5 million more foreign labour but the government says otherwise, it just doesn’t add up.
How did someone come up with the magic figure of 1.5 million in the first place?
Was there any proper survey done to see the labour needs of the major companies in the country?
If there was such a survey, why were the findings not made known to the Malaysian public?
Or better still, why not publish these as job vacancies so that Malaysians can apply for them.
Bringing in foreign labour is not cheap; money spent on bringing them in can in fact be used to make jobs more attractive to Malaysians.
Given the current economic situation, when companies are experiencing a severe drop in business and locals are being retrenched, where will the 1.5 million workers from Bangladesh be placed?
A report said the Malayan Agricultural Producers Association (MAPA) director Mohamad Audong has refuted suggestions that the sector needs as many as 1.5 million foreigners.
According to him, the entire sector, which employs between 350,000 and 400,000 workers at any one time, only faces a shortage of between 10,000 and 20,000 workers every year when workers return to their home countries.
If they are thinking of plantations in Sarawak, they can forget it because releasing 1.5 million foreigners into the state of hardly three million people will have catastrophic social and political consequences.
Besides, Sarawak doesn’t have need for that many foreign workers, not now and not in the future because the state has stopped opening up new plantation land.
If the agricultural sector in Malaya says it has no need for 1.5 million extra foreign labour, if Sarawak can’t picture itself being flooded by 1.5 million Bangladeshis, what then can be the reason behind the foreign labour import plan?
Could it be that the plan is fuelled by greed – greed on the part of those involved in the drawing and signing of agreements to bring in the foreign labour?
The presence of former ministry officials in the business of bringing in foreign workers is raising eyebrows, and of this Klang MP Charles Santiago was quoted as saying:
“No one knows how these agreements are being signed and there is great suspicion that the suppliers are influencing civil servants who are doing the deal.
“No one is able to see the agreements and there are never representatives from trade unions or companies when these deals are made.
“Unless Putrajaya releases a labour needs impact assessment to back up its claims, there will always be fear that the plan (to bring in more foreigners) is fuelled by greed rather than actual need.”
Sarawak will surely not want the 1.5 million Bangladeshis when it already has more than enough problems trying to accommodate Indonesians working in its oil palm plantations.
Today, Sarawak has decided basic education must be extended to the children of Indonesian workers in the oil palm plantations.
The initial suggestion was to have Sekolah Indonesia, but the state government has come up with its own – Community Learning Centres (CLC), which are “temporary education institutions to provide basic education and facilities for children of foreign workers with valid permits and visas employed in plantations in Sarawak”.
Imagine how much more complicated the situation will be if 1.5 million Bangladeshis are released into the plantations in Sarawak!-The Ant Daily
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