The World of Fat4

It is not really a harsh title if you ask me. Afterall, the ministry of manpower has been promoting how we should do away with foreign labours as they are taking away jobs from locals and that locals will always have low wages with these foreign labours around.

However, the truth is further than that. Foreign workers do not earn that meagre RM300-400 anymore. Personally, I do have quite a number of foreign workers and they earn more than RM1,000 a month. I am sure many lowly paid Malaysians would jump when they hear how we pay our workers up to RM2,000 a month for doing what is a menial job.

But let me tell you the truth once and for all. Malaysia is near “full” employment - meaning those who do not want to work and will not look for work are not considered unemployed. There are plenty of jobs around. I have been short staffed at one of my businesses for the last 7 years due to increasing competition from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Being a professional business, most of these skilled workers would migrate to either Singapore (where the pay is supposedly double) or Kuala Lumpur (where the life is more happening). Some would even migrate to China. My town boasts one of the highest salary in the country.

Okay. Malaysians would not even bother to work in some sector. Let’s say those menial jobs. Malaysians look down on these jobs. And these foreign workers, some with very good qualification from back home, don’t mind working over time and working hard to do up the job so that their monthly stipends would be quite lucrative. Most are given performance based salary where if they perform to a certain level, they will get so and so much. Trust me, I have tried to use local workers before (during one of the “restricted” entry period a few years ago) and they suck. Yes SUCK. They are damm lazy and working into the second hours, you can noticeably feel that they slow down. I don’t really mind as the pay is based on performance, finish the job requirements and get XXXX. An example would be pay per hour. Even if we give the local RM8 per hour and the foreign worker RM5 per hour, the foreign worker will still earn more than the local at month end. Local workers tend to have a lot more MCs. It is not like we never try to migrate back to local workers but the problems associated with local worker will make the foreign workers look like angels (truth is they are not easy to deal with either).

I feel the ministry should have taken a lot more ground views before making decisions on doing away totally without foreign workers. Unless our own people can change their work pattern.