Group wants all-round plan to resolve Sabah labour shortage

KOTA KINABALU: Employers here want the state government to have a more comprehensive framework from which to build up a local workforce instead of legalising illegal immigrants to overcome the shortage of plantation workers.

Sabah Employers Association president Yap Cheen Boon said the “Immigration approach” to legalise foreign workers was not in line with solutions towards creating a local workforce.

He said it was important for the state government to come out with a comprehensive plan to resolve labour shortage not only in the plantation sector but other sectors in the state.

Yap said it was the right time for the new state government under Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal to take up the issue and create a dedicated Human Resources Ministry as a platform to address the situation in the state.

“A policy needs to balance the needs of var- ious business sectors while also developing local potential to productively and jointly contribute towards the economy,” he said in reference to a statement by Shafie that the state was likely to allow the issuance of special passes to foreigners here in a bid to overcome a labour shortage at oil palm plantations.

Citing 2016 data from the Statistics Department, Yap said there were some 783,000 foreigners in Sabah’s workforce but the Immigration Department had only registered 137,676 foreigners with work passes last year.

The availability of both legal and illegal foreigners had often been blamed as the key reason for difficulty in enforcing minimum wage.

The presence of illegal foreigners competing against locals has been said to push down real wages across all sectors, causing capital outflow when salaries are repatriated.