Never-ending foreign labour woes

A NEW government may be in power but when it comes to the recruitment of foreign labour, it seems like it’s the same old, same old.

Some “companies” which have been given bulk approvals to bring in hundreds of foreign workers are scalping them off for huge profits.

These agents, masquerading as agricultural or construction firms, are selling their allotted “calling visas” – the licence from the Human Resources Ministry to import workers – for up to RM5,500 each.

The official levy for the recruitment of workers for the plantation and agriculture sectors is RM640 while it is RM1,850 for those hired for the manufacturing, construction, mining and services sectors.

However, desperate employers in the five critical economic sectors of manufacturing, construction, plantation, agriculture and services have little choice but to take over these visas to keep their businesses running.

Is this the key reason why the Human Resources Ministry has now suspended all applications and approvals? Most likely so.

The decision was made after the ministry had approved 995,396 employment quotas, including those given under the Foreign Worker Employment Relaxation Plan (PKPPA).

The PKPPA was announced in January to address the labour crunch in the five crucial sectors. It was meant to allow employers to hire foreign workers from 15 countries, based on what they could afford and need, without any preconditions or quotas.

On March 18, Human Resources Minister V. Sivakumar said the number of approvals was enough to meet the existing needs of the industries.

In justifying the suspension of applications and approvals, he said that the flow of workers was still low compared with the quotas approved.

The shocking freeze has put employers in many industries in a quandary.

Business groups have pleaded that instead of a blanket moratorium, the government should understand their predicament and consider the situations of each case.

As highlighted by SME (small and medium enterprises) Association of Malaysia president Ding Hong Sing, the hardest hit are micro and small-scale enterprises.

This is because unlike big companies, these small businesses tend to apply for fewer numbers of workers but face problems in getting the required documentation.

It appears that many of their applications for foreign workers have been rejected, often without reasons, even after the tough conditions imposed were met.

Besides the small factories, among those badly hit by the shortage are farmers working their own lands and smaller contractors, especially those in the agriculture sector.

Last week, I heard about a farmer in Melaka who started out by growing okra and cucumbers on his 2.42ha plot, seven years ago. Over the years, he expanded the farm to 16.18ha but the return of workers to their home countries during the Covid-19 pandemic forced him to downsize considerably.

“I have already lost three harvests so far this year due to the shortage of workers. The crops have to be harvested in time and there is only so much that one person can do,” he lamented.

He has appealed for help from officers of the Department of Agriculture and even a Melaka state exco member.

“The response is the same. They asked me to start work on my land first and wait for the workers to come. They don’t seem to understand that without workers, even if I just clear the land, it will be overgrown with grass and weeds in just two weeks,” he said.

This farmer has also lost RM20,000, which he had spent renting hostels with certificates of fitness for his would-be workers – a prerequisite for the application – and also in preparing the various documents needed for approval.

“I submitted my application on March 15, only to be told that it had been frozen three days later,” he said.

On Sunday, horticultural scientist Chandra L. Ramprakash shared a plaintive message which he had sent to an aide of Sivakumar’s on behalf of a loosely connected group of about 300 entrepreneurs from various fields. It was a request for an appointment to highlight the sufferings of micro and small entrepreneurs, whose foreign worker applications had been rejected.

It stated that it was not an exaggeration to say that some were so helpless that they were “on the verge of suicide”.

“Please give a date for me to come over. If needed, I can bring hundreds of such cases,” the message read.

Chandra, who owns an academy to teach people who want to venture into farming, said his own 40-year-old agro-biotech company with land and research resources had also been badly hit by the worker shortage.

Without the workers, he had to shutter his fertiliser factory in Lukut, Negri Sembilan, premises he had been renting for RM9,000 a month.

“Like many others, my application was rejected without reason. It looks like I have to go through agents to get workers. I have paid a lot of taxes before Covid-19 but now we are almost in the streets because of this issue,” he said.

The small business operators and farmers are also questioning the lack of transparency in the process and the decision to freeze recruitment.

“The government has only given the number of workers approved. It has not mentioned the number of rejected applications. How about displaying the list of companies which were given the approvals?” asked Chandra.

He said applying standard rules for all industries wanting to hire foreign workers is not practical and is unfair, adding that small business operators are not able to meet the stringent conditions.

He said the cost of operations had spiked significantly as a result of the exorbitant rates demanded by agents posing as companies.

According to him, the agents would bring in the workers as soon as the farmers bought the “calling visas” from them.

But the agents would then switch to the role of “labour suppliers”. They would provide workers to employers at the rate of RM100 to RM120 a day.

Given such a scenario, the government should urgently meet with those affected and overhaul the entire process of foreign labour recruitment.

Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this profound observation by Greek playwright Sophocles: ‘Without labour nothing prospers.’ The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.