Business owners losing confidence in govt as foreign worker shortage hits, says Guan Eng

Updated 3 years ago · Published on 30 Jul 2022 11:53AM · 0 Comments

Factory workers queue up for a health screening at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, at a hostel in Meru, Selangor, on November 16, 2020. Malaysia is in sore need of foreign labour in the wake of an exodus of migrant workers following the coronavirus outbreak. – The Malaysian Insight file pic, July 30, 2022.

A DEPRECIATING ringgit demands simplified and more transparent procedures for foreign labour recruitment as businesses lose confidence in Putrajaya, former finance minister Lim Guan Eng said.

The Bagan MP urged Human Resources Minister S. Saravanan to decentralise foreign labour applications to individual states instead of creating bottlenecks in Putrajaya.

“Decentralising applications to individual states… is a first step but applications must be facilitated and processed quickly,” said Lim

“Saravanan must give a full accounting with a weekly report of how (many) foreign labour (applications have been) processed against the number of applications.”

The DAP secretary-general said businesses have lost confidence in the government due to its policy flip-flops that have led to a “self-inflicted labour shortage”.

Lim said the dearth of workers today is the result of “bureaucratic red-tape, inter-ministerial confusion, and the government’s inability to keep its promises in its memorandum of understanding with Indonesia”.

“Policy deregulation and liberalisation of quotas are the only tools to revive business confidence.”

Malaysia needs to resolve its foreign worker recruitment problems to not only overcome corruption but also to arrest the effects of a depreciating ringgit and to spur economic growth, he said.

Malaysian businesses which are already struggling are expected to face harder times as the ringgit is expected to decline further due to dropping prices of crude oil and palm oil and a US recession, he added.

“Malaysian businesses have paid dearly for the government’s failures. The palm oil sector, glove industry and automotive component parts manufacturers (alone) are facing losses of RM33.5 billion due to the labour shortage. “ 

“If losses from other manufacturing, retail and hospitality, tourism and services sectors are tabulated, total losses will run into the tens of billions of ringgit. Many businesses have had to reject new orders or even close down due to the foreign labour shortage.” – July 30, 2022.

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