KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 28): The Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) has lauded the call by Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) M Kulasegaran for the management of foreign workers to be placed solely under the Ministry of Human Resources (MOHR).
"The FMM has since 2018 been calling for the more effective foreign worker management through a single ministry and single end-to-end online system to ensure a holistic, fair and transparent administration of foreign workers in the country," said FMM president Tan Sri Soh Thian Lai.
"More importantly, the industry should not be burdened with flip-flops in government decisions when it comes to foreign worker management that has plagued the country over the years. which has been most frustrating for employers," he said in a statement on Thursday.
Stressing that having a single agency to solely handle the entire management of foreign workers would ensure that a coherent set of policies could be implemented within a strategic framework for the management of foreign workers, Soh said this is critical in supporting the economic growth targets of the country underpinned in part by the labour requirements of industries including foreign workers.
“The MOHR should be the only agency in charge of recruitment and management of foreign workers as the labour regulator of the country.
“The MOHR serves as the umbrella organisation that oversees the planning, management and development of the country’s manpower resources via its other departments and agencies, and thus is the most fit and appropriate ministry to undertake the management of foreign worker matters in the country, in line with its overall charter to ensure smooth operations of the nation’s labour market,” said the FMM president.
On Wednesday, Kulasegaran said there is a need for the government to streamline the management of foreign workers by allowing the MOHR to take the lead, instead of having two ministries to handle similar functions, as it would lead to overlapping functions and corruption.
The recruitment and management of foreign workers are currently handled by both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the MOHR.
Kulasegaran, who held the human resources minister's post during the Mahathir administration in 2018-2020, pointed out that a comprehensive study on the management of foreign workers had been conducted during his tenure as the minister. The committee produced a report explicitly stating that the MOHR should be the sole authority responsible for handling foreign workers.
The current situation with dual responsibility in handling foreign worker matters is not only inefficient but also counterproductive, said Kulasegaran in a statement, after the arrest by police of 171 Bangladeshi men seen walking in a large group in Pengerang, Johor, in a video that went viral.
Police said the men were marching towards the Bayu Damai police station to file a report on Wednesday, claiming that their agents had failed to provide them with jobs as promised.