Ministry to ensure Geely complies with labour law
KUALA LUMPUR: The government will closely monitor Chinabased automobile manufacturer Zhejiang Geely Holdings Bhd to ensure that it hires Malaysian workers for national carmaker Proton.
Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran, at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday, said the ministry would ensure that Geely abided by the labour law.
“With regards to Proton, we will investigate if they do not abide by the law,” he said, adding that foreign firms were bound by Malaysian laws on the employment of foreign workers.
He was replying to an additional question by Datuk Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid (PH-Kapar) regarding the steps to be taken by the government to ensure Geely hired local workers despite it acquiring 49.9 per cent of Proton in September last year.
His answer supplemented Sani’s question on what steps to be taken by the government in the event that foreign companies that took over local firms refused to hire Malaysians.
Sani also raised the issue of the Labour Department having only 400 inspectors to monitor employers and ensure they followed the rules when hiring foreign workers.
Kulasegaran admitted that there was a shortage of labour inspectors to check on businesses.
“We have applied to the Finance Ministry to increase the number of officers.”
He told the Dewan Rakyat that there were 1,781,598 registered foreign workers employed in five formal sectors and one informal sector as of May 31.
He said employers were barred from firing local workers to hire foreign ones, in line with Section 60M of the Employment Act 1955.
He said in the event that employers needed to reduce their workforce due to redundancy of employees, they must first let go of their foreign workers before they could terminate local workers’ services, in line with Section 60N of the same act.