Kulasegaran: Foreign worker agreements to be reviewed, priority to Malaysians
KUALA LUMPUR: The government will review foreign worker agreements with all countries involved in order to reduce dependency on them, says Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran.
He said job priority should be given to Malaysians first before foreign workers.
“All these are subject to review. As far as foreign workers are concerned, we want to reduce dependency on them.
“Priority must be given to our workers, our people first. Think of our Malaysians first, others come second,” he told reporters during a press conference at Wisma Perkeso here yesterday.
Kulasegaran, a first time minister was commenting on the Malaysia-Bangladesh agreement in 2016 aimed at receiving 1.5 million workers.
However, he said the ministry would not deprive the thousands of Bangladeshis – who were already working in Malaysia – of their jobs and send them back to their country.
“We are not going to ask them to get out. It (must have) a period of time. Those already here are not going to be ordered to leave. They left their country and came here. We will do what we can.
“This filling up, we do agree there is retraining and other matters. Our priority should always be on our (very own) workers. Why (is it) in certain industries, (that) we see a lot of foreign workers?,” he asked.
Meanwhile, Kulasegaran said the ministry would assist in filling up vacancies caused by foreign workers.
He said a total of 3,687 cases concerning human resources had already been brought up to the Industrial Court up till April 30, with 2,775 ongoing cases and 912 cases settled.
“We hope to accelerate in three months and if possible I have told them that they should finish it within one month. I told them that they must, maybe need to come back on weekends at night, and public holidays to dispose of these cases,” he added.
“It is not fair for workers to wait that long and because of substantial justice, we want to finish (the cases) as early as we can. I will assist in the process.”