Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Employ refugees instead of foreigners, says MTUC

PETALING JAYA, Feb 12 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) wants the government to allow refugees to work in labour-strapped organisations instead of importing foreign workers.
Its secretary-general, G. Rajasegaran, said the thousands of refugees now in the country could be easily absorbed as workers in the various industries.
By doing so, the government would not only be able to save millions of ringgit in sustaining these refugees but would also gain world recognition for being a humane country, he said.
Rajasegaran was commenting on the recent announcement that 100,000 new visas were approved for foreign workers in the last three months.
He said the government should thoroughly study the needs of the industries before approving the permits because the information provided by some companies could be misleading.
He claimed that an MTUC survey last year found that some companies got rid of workers with high salaries and replaced them with lowly paid staff.
Their modus operandi was to offer a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) to workers earning between RM900 and RM1,500 and then employ workers earning salaries of between RM500 and RM600 in their place, he added.
He said that by doing so they justified their need for foreign workers and the government took their request at face value and approved the permits.
The other flaw in the recruitment of foreign workers, he pointed out, was that the approval was done by the Home Ministry which did not seem to have proper coordination with the Human Resources Ministry.
He also said that the 272 registered outsourcing companies were another reason for the "excess of foreign workers in the country", claiming that these companies often brought in workers in excess of actual need.
Latest figures issued by Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein show there are 1.2 million legal foreign workers in Malaysia. There are believed to be an equal number of illegal or undocumented workers.

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