Industries warn labour shortage will have domino effect

PETALING JAYA: With 10,000 domestic workers scheduled to arrive from Indonesia after the Hari Raya holidays, industries that rely heavily on foreign workers also want their applications expedited.

Lamenting the slow recruitment process, they said they were continuing to incur up to billions of ringgit in losses each month while facing imminent legal repercussions arising from project delays due to the labour shortage.

Malaysian Palm Oil Association chief executive officer Datuk Nageeb Wahab said despite the first batch of 32,000 foreign workers approved specifically for the plantation sector eight months ago, none has arrived.

“I think the source countries are still concerned about the Covid-19 situation. Malaysia also has not sorted out the SOP (standard operating procedure),” he said.

However, with the first batch of 10,000 domestic helpers, Nageeb is hopeful that more Indonesian workers would follow suit.

“Our shortage is mainly in harvesting, a job that the Indonesians are good at. A lot of them can earn up to RM3,000 a month with free housing and utilities,” he said, adding that many of them also stayed on the job for a long time.

Nageeb estimated that the worker shortage in plantations had exceeded 100,000, mainly for the most difficult task of harvesting.

“With insufficient workers, our losses increase because more fruit bunches are not harvested in time.”

Nageeb called for the hiring process to be expedited, especially the interview process, and to allow the industry to access and key in their worker shortage in the Foreign Workers Centralised Management System.

Weighing in, Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association Malaysia acting president Datuk NK Tong said the worker shortage would continue to cause delays and expose developers to possible legal challenges from homebuyers.

Although the government is aware and is addressing the issue, he said the process to bring in workers for the construction sector as well as manufacturing, agriculture, plantation and services should be expedited due to the deadlines that industry players in these sectors have to meet.

“Any further delays in construction only add more costs.

“This ultimately goes against the government’s goal of making housing more affordable to the rakyat,” he said.