Foreigners not taking away jobs from locals: Malaysian minister

The 100,000 foreign workers allowed to be recruited over the past five months by Malaysian authorities did not take away jobs from Malaysians, a local daily reported in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

The Star quoted Malaysian Human Resources Minister S. Subramaniam as saying that if the Malaysian government rejected requests of foreign workers, the manufacturers would be forced to be relocated. This would in turn result in locals losing their jobs, said the minister.

Malaysia is heavily dependent on foreign labor especially in the sectors of plantation, manufacturing and construction. It is estimated that the country has over 1 million legal foreign workers mainly from Indonesia.

Subramaniam said employers in the manufacturing sector had appealed to the authorities to let them bring in foreign workers.

Clarifying the fact that the Malaysian government had never frozen the intake of foreign workers into the sector, Subramaniam said only the intake of new Bangladeshi workers was frozen.

Besides Indonesia, Malaysia also sources for foreign workers from countries like Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to work in fields said to be rejected by the locals.

The decision to freeze the intake of Bangladeshi workers was made in Oct. 2007 because many of them were reportedly deceived by unscrupulous agents promising lucrative pay in Malaysia.

Source:Xinhua