Malaysian Deputy Human Resources Minister Datuk Ismail Abd Muttalib on Friday said the country would recruit only 10,000 workers from Bangladesh, clearing up a media confusion over the exact number of workers to be recruited.
“The country is actually planning to bring in 10,000 workers, instead of 1.4 million as was reported,” Malaysian English daily The Star quoted the minister saying in parliament.
Mr Ismail was replying to a query from a member of parliament who asked for a clarification over the matter. He said the Malaysian government would recruit those workers in its plantation sector by early next year.
The confusion was created when several Malaysian dailies reported last month that the country would recruit 1.4 million Bangladeshi workers, taking cues from a statement made by Bangladesh’s expatriates’ welfare and overseas minister.
Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, the minister, visited Malaysia last month and held meetings with its interior minister and the human resources minister.
While talking to journalists, the expat minister said the Bangladesh government had registered 1.4 million people as part of a programme to send workers in Malaysia, Bangladesh High Commissioner to Malaysia AKM Atiqur Rahman told the Dhaka Tribune on Friday.
However, he mentioned, the Malaysian media “misquoted” him as saying the country’s government would recruit all the 1.4 million workers.
In his Friday parliament speech, Mr Ismail also said, “As of September 23, a list of 8,703 applicants was provided by the Bangladesh government to the police and immigration department. From these, 2,288 have been filtered and 75 were found to have criminal records.”
He further said the recruitment of the workers was “stringent” and only three out of the 10 companies that had applied for workers had received approval.
