Rely on foreign workers at our own peril

The unfettered entry of foreign workers is one issue that will eventually destroy Malaysia if we are not careful.

COMMENT

By TK Chua

I am glad Liew Chin Tong wrote a piece on “How to pay law graduate Zahra better”. This is one public policy issue which has been neglected for a long time. In fact, this is not the only one. Most public policies in Malaysia are either neglected or treated in a cursory manner. The government, in general, prefers to deal with setting up more GLCs, signing more procurement contracts and privatising more projects and services.

It is time we Malaysians wake up. We should have never allowed businessmen in cahoots with politicians to dictate most of the public policies in this country.

The unfettered entry of foreign workers is one issue that will eventually destroy Malaysia if we are not careful. Today, even Malaysian hawkers are also leveraging on foreign workers. So, effectively, what do Malaysians do other than sitting around collecting money or becoming government servants.

I have highlighted this point many times earlier – the fact that there are now more than a million government employees is an indication that Malaysia is not a country that has a labour shortage. On the contrary, we now have too many Malaysians who have nowhere else to go other than becoming government servants. These are the people holding fake jobs and creating fake activities that are meaningless in terms of generating real goods and services for the economy. Simply put, we now have too many free riders in the economy.

How can we ever expect the entrepreneurs to innovate, automate and mechanise when foreign workers are available in abundance and without restriction? How can we ever expect the “production function” of the economy to change when working conditions are allowed to remain as they are – dangerous, dirty and difficult? Why the need to improve the working conditions when maimed workers can be replaced the next day without hassle?

Malaysian employers have always complained about Malaysian workers – lazy, expensive and unproductive. No, they are wrong. Malaysian employers just want to equate foreign workers with Malaysian workers. They want to exploit Malaysians the way they exploit foreigners. They want to pay Malaysians less and make them work longer hours the way the foreigners do. They want Malaysians to do their work the same rudimentary way. They never want to move up the value chain. They only want to compete based on low wages and input driven strategy.

It is a stupid myth to try to increase the population of the country thinking that more people will increase the market size and make the economy more vibrant. Bangladesh has more than 150 million people, please tell me which market size can they boast about. Because of rapid increase in population (through import and birth) our amenities are now breaking at the seams everywhere. We find congestion everywhere, our environment degraded and pollution, filth and dirt are now the norm.

We craze for that magical growth number the benefits of which are never shared among the people. We allow the most ugly capitalism to inflict the maximum damage all in the name of growth. Liew Chin Tong talked about paying the garbage workers RM2,000 a month. This is no big deal. In Scandinavian countries, the wage disparity between the top and bottom wage earners is not more than five times on the average.

We can’t look at wage disparity and income distribution purely from an economic point of view. It is time public policies look at the stranglehold of feudalism and “power distance” in our society. Malaysians too readily accept high power distance, i.e. we willingly accept unequal distribution of power between bosses and subordinates. Rightly, the relationship between bosses and subordinates should be one of interdependence rather than dependence. Public policies in Malaysia have skewed too much in favour of the bosses and the capitalist class at the expense of ordinary workers.

It is almost a cliche if I say economic growth must bring benefits and a better life for successive generations of Malaysians. But then why was Liew Chin Tong talking about his wasted generation and that of Zahra’s? I am writing this piece from Norway. For years we Asians think we have the neck breaking growth which will propel us to economic stardom. I am telling you, I don’t think the Norwegians have missed anything wallowing in “slow” growth and “high cost” economy. Malaysia could be better than Norway if only we know how to manage it.

TK Chua is an FMT reader