Industry urges ‘final round’ of rehiring programme
KUALA LUMPUR: Industry players have appealed to the government to consider a “final round” of the illegal foreign workers rehiring programme.
This time, however, they want the process to be handled solely by the Immigration Department.
Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers president Datuk Soh Thian Lai said a letter had been sent to the home minister to request the government to revert to the old 6P amnesty programme, under which dealings were done directly with the Immigration Department.
Industries rejected the just concluded amnesty programme as they had to go through multilayer processes, including having to deal with three vendors that were sanctioned to help Immigration with the process.
Having third parties, they claimed, not only complicated the process of legalising illegal immigrants, but also burdened them with “unnecessary” extra costs.
“The process was so tedious. The fee was causing the cost of hiring ‘new’ foreign workers to be cheaper than legalising illegals.
“Remove the vendors. We want to deal directly with Immigration,” he said, adding that Immigration could develop an online platform for the rehiring process.
He said the government should avoid making hasty decisions as it could disrupt businesses.
It should strive for long-term measures to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign workers.
Malaysian Indian Restaurant Owners Association president T. Muthusamy lambasted the complexity of the rehiring programme, saying it was open to abuse.
“The rehiring process had two stages, with MyEG and the Immigration Department. Many of them paid (their compound and such) to MyEG, but they cannot continue with Immigration procedures due to various reasons.
“Unscrupulous people abuse the situation. I have one case where a girl was left stranded because she could not track down her agent after paying RM3,500 to get legalised.”
He said it was important for the government to assess the industry’s needs, adding that continuous crackdowns on illegal workers might impact industries.
“Let’s have one more proper rehiring (programme) because all these illegal workers are actually employed. We need a proper foreign worker management system, where we can find them, who their employers are and their medical files.”