‘No special quotas for foreign workers’

LARUT: No more special quotas will be given for recruitment of foreign workers in the country, says Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin.

He said that every application from employers must now go through the ministry’s evaluation committee to determine the number of foreign workers eligible to be employed in accordance with the terms and conditions, reports Bernama.

“Any employer who needs to hire foreign workers must obtain the committee’s approval according to the law.

“Take the plantation sector for example, you must know the foreign worker quota and how many are eligible.

“Let’s say there should be 1,000 workers but because there is no sufficient accommodation, you can probably only get 400.

“To get the additional workers you have applied for, you need to submit another application to the Human Resource Ministry or appeal to us for a review as the process is more stringent than before,” he said after a meet-the-people session at Kampung Tapah, Sungai Bayur, near Selama yesterday.

He was commenting on the call by National Organisation of Private Service Agencies Malaysia secretary-general Dr Sukumaran Nair for the government to abolish the “special approval” granted to certain parties to have a monopoly on the entry of foreign workers, to prevent syndicates from bringing in excessive number of foreign workers.

Hamzah said if the quota system was not applied and recruitment could be carried out freely, foreign workers would simply enter the country without adhering to the conditions and criteria, resulting in various welfare problems.

Previously, employers had to deal with the Home Ministry on the employment of foreign workers.

Currently, all such matters can be dealt with through the Human Resource Ministry to ensure uniformity in policies and procedures.

On another matter, Hamzah said the government had no problem issuing a citizenship certificate to applicants if they could produce valid marriage documents.

This is because the issuance of citizenship certificates has to be done in accordance with the laws of the country.

“Among the conditions are a valid marriage certificate, and the marriage has to be registered in the country,” he added.

He was responding to a report which quoted him as saying that a thorough investigation would be carried out to determine the citizenship status of Rohana Abdullah, who was abandoned at two months old at a kindergarten 22 years ago when her Indonesian mother returned to her country.

The girl was reportedly forced to drop out of school because she did not have identification documents. — Bernama