Employers Call For Review Of 5-year Cap Review For Skilled Foreigners

PETALING JAYA, July 23 (Bernama) -- Employers on Thursday called on the government to review its policy to allow skilled foreigners to work in the country for a maximum of five years because it could be detrimental to local businesses.

The Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) executive director Shamsuddin Bardan said the nett effect of the policy would be that employers would have to spend a lot of time and money to retrain new workers.

At present, the policy was to allow unskilled workers to work here for two years, and from the third year onwards their visa extension depended on their skills.

"Usually these workers were sent to various training courses by the companies and they acquire the required skills to make them eligible to get their visa renewed."

"In reality the workers begin to be productive only from the fourth year onwards, and if we send them off, it would be great loss not only to the companies but also the country," he told Bernama.

He said the loss would be other countries' gain because these trained workers were in much demand elsewhere.

Shamsuddin was commenting on the recent government decision to put a cap of maximum five years service by skilled foreigners as one of the strategies to reduce the country's dependence on them.

He said the MEF fully supported the government's move to reduce foreign labour in Malaysia but restricting the duration for skilled workers would be counter productive.

He agreed with the MTUC's suggestion that the government should instead look into the possibility of restricting the intake of foreign unskilled workers.

"We should encourage and train more locals to acquire skills so that they could easily replace foreigners."

At present there were some 2.1 million foreign workers legally employed in the various sectors.

On the government's intention to attract highly skilled and professional Malaysians abroad to come back and "help develop the country", Shamsuddin said the present policy of enticing these group of workers had not been successful despite the many incentives.

"This was mainly due to the fact the remuneration they received in this country was five times less than what they were getting in their host country."

"So to benefit from their skills, what Malaysia could do was to tap their expertise "using modern technology like video conferencing."

"They can continue to work in the host country, yet they can contribute to Malaysia since what was most required was to harness their ideas and experience," he pointed out.

"The government could also gather these Malaysians every year to brainstorm and come up with ideas and suggestions to develop the country."

--BERNAMA