This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on September 7, 2026 - September 13, 2026
The vigour with which the government is taking action against high-ranking ex-officials of Lembaga Tabung Haji for the alleged mismanagement of funds is, unfortunately, not evident in another simmering issue — the opaque recruitment process of foreign workers, which has hit a raw nerve among labour supply industry groups in Bangladesh and Nepal.
The pushback against the Foreign Workers Centralized Management System (FWCMS), which is now under the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Human Resources, suggests that something is amiss with how the platform works.
Last week, umbrella bodies representing foreign labour recruitment agencies in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Pakistan signed a joint statement rejecting the FWCMS. The groups claim that the FWCMS, in its current form, does not allow equal access to all foreign worker employment agencies located in the source countries to be registered on the platform.
They claim that different standards are applied to foreign recruitment agencies in South Asia, compared with those in the Philippines and Indonesia.
As can be seen since 2012, the recruitment of foreign workers, especially from Bangladesh and Nepal, is big business. Hundreds of millions of ringgit change hands and are largely unaccounted for. In Bangladesh, politicians get a percentage of the proceeds.
Coincidentally, the labour market in Malaysia tends to open up, especially to workers from Bangladesh, when a general election is around the corner. It happened in 2012, 2018, 2022 and now, in 2026, when speculation is rife that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will call for elections.
In the current storm, the crux of the objection to the FWCMS is the limitations imposed on foreign employment agencies for direct registration on the platform. In the case of Nepal and Bangladesh, Malaysia has chosen 25 companies from each country to be directly registered on the platform. For India and Pakistan, the number is restricted to 10 each.
There are 423 foreign labour recruitment firms registered in Bangladesh and about 1,100 in Nepal. Following protests from the recruitment agencies in Bangladesh, Malaysia allowed another 325 firms to act as “associate recruitment agents” to pacify the industry players.
The role of the “associate recruitment agents” is not clear.
In Nepal, the foreign labour recruitment agents are protesting against the selection of the 25 companies.
Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies president Dil Bahadur Khatri puts it plainly: “What criteria has Malaysia used to choose the 25 companies out of 1,100 recruitment agencies in Nepal? Previously, there were no restrictions on companies to access the FWCMS platform. As long as they were registered with the Nepal government, they could access the system.
“Why not allow all the companies to access the FWCMS as was the practice in previous years?” Dil Bahadur asks when contacted by The Edge.
The imposition of restrictions by Malaysia on recruitment companies in Bangladesh is not new. It happened in 2012, 2016 and 2022. Each time it happened, there was pushback from the recruitment companies in that country.
In 2012, under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between both countries, only 10 Bangladesh companies were allowed to handle the migration of unskilled labour to Malaysia. The MOU was subsequently modified and eventually dropped due to allegations of high migration costs incurred by the workers.
In 2016, the countries signed another MOU, but it was also not implemented following protests in Bangladesh and concerns raised in Malaysia over the large number of foreign workers entering the country.
In 2018, when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad became prime minister, he suspended the entry of foreign workers from Bangladesh to Malaysia.
In 2022, the number of recruiting firms in Bangladesh was restricted to 10 and eventually expanded to 102 after the recruitment agents protested.
By then, the home ministry was already using the FWCMS but the “source code” for the system was still held by Bestinet Sdn Bhd, as a deal between the government and Bestinet had not been firmed up. The ministry only took over the FWCMS in September 2024.
According to a White Paper on the state of Bangladesh’s economy released in late 2024, one of the reasons its workers have to incur high costs to come to Malaysia is the restriction on the number of foreign labour recruitment companies allowed to access the FWCMS.
It said that recruitment agents who were not among the 102 firms given access to the platform had to pay additional fees to get their workers into the system.
Eventually, the cost for the workers increases, with the bulk of the money going to agents and middle-men in both countries.
According to the White Paper, the estimated cost for each worker came up to 550,000 Bangladeshi takas (about US$5,046) then, way above the official charge.
In May 2024, four months before the home ministry took over the platform, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail suspended the entry of unskilled workers from Bangladesh due to concerns about security and because many workers were coming into Malaysia without a job already secured.
At the moment, the human resources and home ministries are responsible for the entry of foreign workers into the country.
The human resources ministry, helmed by Datuk Seri R Ramanan, is in charge of setting the quota, verifying with employers, and handling all other logistical requirements, including dealing with the recruitment agents. The home ministry handles the security aspect of the workers’ entry.
Both ministries are led by ministers from Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat.
The first batch of 10,000 workers from Bangladesh is expected to come to Malaysia at the end of this month.
They will be travelling to Malaysia completely free and their processing is being handled by government-owned firm, Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Ltd. The aim is to set a new precedent for bringing the migration cost to zero.
Whether this practice can be sustained is left to be seen, especially since Dr Zahed Ur Rahman, adviser to the Bangladeshi prime minister, was reported as saying recently that Malaysia had expressed interest in recruiting another 200,000 workers in the next six months.
Minister of Communications Datuk Fahmi Fadzil and Ramanan have dismissed Zahed’s claim. Ramanan said that the permits for unskilled foreign workers would be issued based on industry needs.
While it is good that the ministers have clarified the issue of the entry of foreign workers, there are still many unanswered questions concerning the use of the FWCMS and the adoption of different standards in different countries.
M Shanmugam ([email protected]) is a contributing editor at The Edge
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