 PUTRAJAYA: The Home Ministry is proposing to allow all employers to hire foreign workers.
At present, foreign workers are recruited mainly for plantations, construction companies, restaurants and as domestic maids.
Under the latest proposal, the agriculture sector and small and medium
industries (SMIs) are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries of the
change in policy.
Home Minister Datuk Azmi Khalid said the agriculture sector, plantation
industries and SMIs would also be allowed to hire foreign workers
temporarily during peak periods like harvesting seasons and festive
periods through a special scheme.
These industries would be allowed to engage the maximum 30% foreign
labour out of their total labour requirement during the peak seasons.
”To streamline this system, we will establish a new sector whose main
function will be to supply foreign workers on contract basis to the
industries that outsource their need for temporary labour,” he said
after opening the briefing session for employers on how to legalise
their illegal workers.
Azmi said there were already many agents supplying workers on temporary
or contract basis, but they were operating outside the law.
The revamp, he said, would enable these agents to be licensed so that
they could source for foreign workers legally and thus be held
accountable for the welfare and whereabouts of their workers at all
times.
New steps would be drawn up to regulate this sector, he said, adding
that the workers would be required to pay a levy to prevent them from
running away.
Azmi said that during the time when the workers could not be sent out to work, the agents would have to pay their salaries.
The whole system, he said, needed to undergo a total revamp “to
deregulate it to fit market needs and to address many blind spots in
the present system.”
He said that essentially, the proposal has already been agreed to by
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Deputy Prime
Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who also chairs the Cabinet Committee
on Foreign Workers.
This, he said, would mean greater responsibility for the industries as
they would be required to self-regulate and self-discipline their
players.
Azmi said that another measure to be introduced would be to require all
employers to thumbprint their foreign workers every time they were paid
their salaries.
“This will enable us to monitor and track their movement and their
place of work at all times so as to prevent any of the foreign workers
from disappearing from the system,” he said.
All legal foreign workers are currently required to be fingerprinted as
part of the move to provide them with biometric identification cards.
source: The Star - 19-02-2005
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