EMPLOYERS still waiting for the foreign workers they had requested, are demanding that Putrajaya speed up the recruitment process by cutting the bureaucratic red tapes.

They said the mountain of paperwork coupled with the snail pace of recruitment is costing them money in lost opportunities.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Association of Malaysia president Ding Hong Sing said it takes on average, between 60 and 75 days for its member companies to get their workers.

To make it worse, the number of workers they are getting is not what they had requested.

While employers in the manufacturing sector could breathe a sigh of relief with the arrival of about 47,000 foreign workers, those who are still on the waiting list said they had to decline foreign orders for fear they could not fulfill their contracts.

They said these orders have now gone to Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

The 47,000 foreign workers who landed here were mostly from Nepal, which Human Resources Minister M Saravanan said were “to fill in the gaps in the job market”.

He said to date 390,000 workers have been approved for work.

Ding said there were “too many documents required” in the application process.

On top of that, the government was also slow in setting the interview dates with the employers.

“It’s slow because this is the time when many SMEs are recovering (from the pandemic lockdown) and need to speed up to clear the backlogged orders and fulfill new ones.”

“It’s a long wait,” Ding told The Malaysian Insight.

He said of the 47,000 workers who had arrived, the SMEs only “received a few”.

He added that with the slow arrival, his member companies estimated they would only get their workers either at the end of the year or early next year.

Delayed by interview cancellations

The Bumiputera Retailers Association, for their part, is asking Putrajaya why their members are not getting the number of workers they had asked for.

Its president Ameer Ali Mydin pointed out that instead of approving what the industry was asking, the government was giving a largely reduced number.

“If an employer applied for 1,000 foreign workers, the government would only allow 200,” he said.

“We are not getting the foreign workers free of charge. There are levies to be paid, and we have to pay their salaries.”

“(We do) not employ foreign workers for fun. We apply for what we need and the government should approve what we applied for,” Amir, who is also the managing director of the Mydin Group, said.

The group, known for its chain of supermarkets, employs 6,000 workers.

The other main grouse of the retailers is the abrupt cancellation of the interview on their application.

Amir said the recruitment is not only “taking a little bit too long”, the application interview is cancelled at short notice.

“I don’t understand why we were called for an interview and then it was cancelled.”

Amir said the cancellation has a domino effect and leads to further delays in getting workers.

“This makes planning difficult. Hiring people is a process.”

“You need good planning. It’s not that you apply today and it gets approved tomorrow.”

“It will be about two to three months before the workers come.”

Amir said the retail sector needs about 250,000 workers, “I have been told many have not come yet”.

He also questioned why retailers are not allowed to recruit foreigners to work in the frontline of their store, like cashiers.

“Why the double standard?” he asked, pointing out restaurants could hire them.

He asked what the difference was between those waiting at tables, who sometimes double up as cashiers, and the supermarket cashiers at checkout counters.

Amir said his supermarkets have difficulty in hiring cashiers as locals view the work to be “very hard”.

It’s a job that entails standing for eight to 10 hours and worst of all, they get scolded by the customers all the time.

Amir said the cashier’s job is even harder than any work in the construction industry.

“They might work in an air-conditioned environment but we still can’t get people.”

Source countries can help more

The Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) president, Soh Thian Lai, said the first batch of foreign workers – the bulk going to manufacturers - would ease the pressure on their members’ operations and allow them to chart out better management of their workforce.

“The arrival of the foreign workers in batches, irrespective of the source country, will provide relief  to the current operating pressures on manufacturers and allow them to gradually intensify their efforts to reorganise their workforce management to clear the back-logs and disrupted production operations to meet increasing market demand,” Soh said in response to queries from The Malaysian Insight.

Soh said the manufacturing and manufacturing related services would need around 600,000 workers, including meeting the manpower needs of new investment and expansion projects taking place this year.

He also said manufacturers are hopeful that with the processing of applications of foreign workers “now smoother”, including the decentralisation of the interview process, employers would be able to bring in workers faster.

To speed up the process, Soh hoped that source countries could assist in expediting their part of the process.

“The foreign worker shortage has most certainly had a significant impact on productivity as industries face challenges in meeting their orders and sales.

“The labour shortage had impacted the ability of companies to fulfil orders, including within global supply chains which could result in facing stiff penalties and/or unable to accept new orders,customers,” he said.

Soh said it had also resulted in delays in delivery of goods and huge backlogs as they are forced to operate below capacity.

“The impact could be further compounded should existing customers, given the pick-up in demand, decide to source for alternative suppliers in other countries thus removing Malaysia from their supply chain.”

He said while FMM does not have an exact projection on the losses faced by the manufacturing industries due to the labour shortages issues, the impact on the operations of all the affected economic sectors which has led to work stoppages and under-production in the past months could result in billions of losses to the business sector and economy. – September 2, 2022.