There have been countless accounts of unfair and illegal treatment of foreigners who are working in Malaysia. I want to add 1 more..
Malaysia depends heavily on foreign labour, from countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal to name a few. Without them, a lot of industries in Malaysia will grind to a halt. No doubt the government now has mandated a new minimum salary of RM900 per month, but (and this is a BIG but!!), there are very few locals (Malaysians) who would want to work for this amount. realizing this, my company willingly pays RM1100 per month basic for locals. Even with this amount, plus uniform, safety shoes, over time, medical, insurance, we have not been able to recruit any locals who would stay more than 1 month.
No matter what we try, we are still heavily dependent on foreign workers.
We have meticulously followed whatever new directions, new rulings that came and gone, with regard to recruitment of foreign workers. When the government announced that every worker must have his biometrics registered, we chartered buses to bring them to have this done. When they announced the new minimum salary, we followed.
Every one of our workers is legal.
On 1st September 2013, while in a bus, on the way to town, 25 of my workers were rounded up, and sent the Lenggeng detention center, despite all of them being legals. They have certified copies of their passport, their working permits, the whole jazz, and yet, they were rudely rounded up.
We had to worked until late Monday night (following day) to get 24 of them out from the detention center. 1 more is still languishing inside the detention simply because his passport is with the Immigration Office for renewal of his work permit....!
What is the point of spending millions of ringgits on the 6P program, costly biometrics equipment, permits on passports, when all these so called sophisticated data/equipment is not used at all?? What is the point of biometrics data of each and every worker when it is not used on simple matter like verifying the person's legal status?
I can only summarized the following: Malaysia has wasted, thrown away, burnt, flushed down the poop hole, hundreds of millions if not billions of RM on systems, equipment, programs, manpower, that do not work as designed.
Will there be a day soon in the future where Malaysians will be working as foreign operators in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal? if we continue the way we are, I will not be too surprised....
