How many of us uses foreign workers? be it foreign maid or working in a factory, etc. it was estimated at one stage there were like 2-3 million legal foreign workers and another 1 million illegal foreign workers in malaysia. almost on a daily basis we are bound to meet one of them. out of every 7 people in malaysia one would be a foreign worker. So it is quite a high chance that you will see a foreign worker. Why do we need to rely on foreign worker so much? are they that much cheaper?
to be honest with you, some foreign workers pay are pretty good. Some construction worker gets over RM3k a month. During the heyday, any construction workers working on the KL Tower projects gets around US$100 a day. But that work has heaps of risks. Quite a number of people died in that construction project.
basically to employ a foreign worker previously, you need to go to the ministry of home affair for approval. it is quite a hassle providing necessary documentations and personally having to go to the ministry in putrajaya. Agents are NOT allowed to be used. I cannot imagine how the boss of an MNC will have to go through with the entire procedure. Maybe they have a special director to do up all these minute paper work procedures.
nowadays even more susah. First you need to report to the ministry of human resources who will “attempt” to help you find local to fill up position. And after having exhausted the local labour avenue, you are approved to go to ministry of home affairs for application for foreign labour. It is a total waste of time as we all know that local do not want these jobs, that’s why we need foreign labour. A lot of malaysians do not know that some of our country’s biggest natural resources churners are being churned by foreign labour.
sure they curse and swear that all foreign workers should die. If suddenly, as an example, all the foreign workers leave malaysia, we will have this massive hole which will ultimately kill malaysia’s economy. In some ways, these foreign workers are the hands that ensure we all sleep and eat well. besides oil and gas, everything major industry in the top 5 are very much foreign workers dependent. If you ever have a chance to go to the immigration department to see people applying for foreign workers visa, then you will understand what i mean. Some factories rely on them in the thousands.
can we live without our foreign workers? well, ultimately we may have to. it is only through ourselves to continually upgrade ourselves and our process to be more efficient and more machinery capital intensive that we can reduce reliance on cheap foreign labour source.
The ironic is that last time, Badawi shoo-ed away all the Indonesians, and then made it an absolute pain for them to legally come back. Lines were long. Immigration staff didn’t know what they were doing.
All those valuable construction workers as you mentioned were in Malaysia several years already, learning their skills from locals. Everyone knows Indos are highly skilled at construction (name *one* construction project without Indo workers..)
So what did they do? They smartened up and went to countries like Germany and Sweden, where skilled workers are welcomed with visas and open arms, and paid 5-10 times more.
How fucking stupid is that? We train the workers, then kick them out, and make them line up to come in again… Why not just register them while in the country?
What we get in Malaysia nowadays are the unskilled or less skilled workers. Why the hell would better workers work here when they can work for higher pay and better conditions in Europe?
aw: precisely. Sometimes malaysian government do not learn. they never do things with great planning. It always sound good on paper but at the implementation stage, somehow something sure fucks up. If only they get aw and fat4 to run the show, hehehe malaysia will have growth 2 times of china.. LOL