The Malaysian government has decided to halt the recruitment of new foreign workers into the country, including the 1.5 million new Bangladeshi workers who were supposed to get employment opportunities there.
The decision comes nearly a month after Bangladesh signed a deal to send 1.5m workers to Malaysia under Government to Government Plus mechanism.
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the country’s cabinet has decided to halt the recruitment of new foreign workers into the country, Malaysian newspaper The Star reported. He said this also meant that the initial plan to bring in 1.5m Bangladeshi workers was officially scrapped.
“There will not be one, let alone 1.5 million new foreign workers coming into our country,” he added.
“Employers who need workers will have to apply to legalise existing foreigners in the country without work permits or whose permits have expired,” Ahmad Zahid was quoted by The Star. He also said employers had until June 30 to legalise such foreign workers.
“The government is bringing forward the deadline from December 31 because employers continuously ignore the chances given to them,” Ahmad went on.
“Instead, the government is criticised and pressured. If they cannot hire anyone, they should just get the Malaysian Employers Federation, Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers and Malaysian Trade Union Congress to help them find locals to do the job,” the deputy prime minister said.
On February 19, Malaysia took the decision to freeze all recruitment of foreign workers.
However, in a statement the day after the decision, Malaysian Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot said the decision to “freeze all recruitment” of foreign workers will not affect the validity of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with Bangladesh.
Harun al-Rashid, regional coordinator for Karam Asia Berhad, a Malaysian organisation that deals with the plight of migrants, criticised the Bangladesh government for not carrying out proper assessment on the situation of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants who are already living there before signing an MoU with Malaysia.
“All the negotiations before the MoU were clearly linked with individual companies or political personalities who are linked with the current government. As a result, there were lots of criticism and protest against this deal,” Harun said.
He also questioned why the new G2G Plus scheme was introduced without assessing the previous G2G system, and why the draft of the new MoU was not made public.