Foreign workforce down by 200,000

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PUTRAJAYA: The government's multi-pronged effort to reduce the number of foreign workers in the country has been successful, Labour director-general Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim said yesterday.

"As a result, the foreign workers population in the last two months had been reduced by 200,000 from 2.1 million in May to 1.9 million at present."

Among the measures adopted by the government were strict enforcement of regulations, curtailing the new intake of foreign labour, giving top priority to locals, improving work conditions in factories to attract locals and freezing licences to foreign labour outsourcing companies.

Better coordination and communications among various agencies, non-governmental organisations, trade unions and employers was another factor which helped greatly, he said.

Ismail said the Human Resources Ministry had tightened regulations and was strict with companies which applied for foreign labour.

"The applicants have to prove that they had done their best to get local labour before we give them the green light.

"We even inspect their premises to do our own assessment on the merits of their requests before we give our approval."

Ismail said that even if permission was given to employ foreigners, they had to strictly comply with another regulation, which was to maintain the ratio between locals and foreigners.

"We have introduced a quota system, where for the manufacturing sector dealing in exports it is two foreigners to one local and one local to one foreigner for all other sectors," he said.

On the reported import of about 70,000 Pakistani workers by December, Ismail, said these workers would also be subjected to the various regulations now in force like keeping within the set quota.

Yesterday, Pakistani High Commissioner Lt-Gen (Rtd) Tahir Mahmud Qazi was reported to have said that his country would treble the number of Pakistani workers in Malaysia by year end.

There are now 30,000 Pakistani workers here employed mainly in the construction, services and plantation sectors.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Trades Union Congress praised the affirmative efforts of the government and pledged full support for its success.

"It is definitely in the best interest of our country in the long term to reduce our dependence on foreigners," said its vice-president, A. Balasubramaniam.

Malaysian Employers Federation executive director Shamsuddin Bardan said employers were already putting various plans into action to assist the government in its effort to further reduce foreign labour.