Putrajaya’s handling of 1.5m Bangladeshis a major disaster

Now Putrajaya is saying Malaysia will only receive a fraction of the earlier announced number after having come under fire from various quarters.

COMMENT

Confusion reigns over the 1.5 million Bangladeshis expected to flood the Malaysian labour sector in the next three years.

For weeks, cabinet ministers fed us various reasons to justify the bringing in of foreign labour in such staggering numbers. We heard it all, from “they are needed to do dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs as the locals won’t do it”, to “the deal was based on requests by employers.”

Today however, we get to hear a spanking new version – that the group of Bangladeshis totalling 1.5 million are not solely for the Malaysian market, but to be spread out among 139 countries.

This is what Human Resources Minister Richard Riot Jaem told a press conference this morning.

“I would like to state that news reports about the government taking in 1.5 million Bangladeshi workers is a misconception. It is untrue. It is incorrect,” he was quoted as saying.

This despite even the headlines in reputed Bangladeshi media outlets blaring “Deal signed to send 1.5 million workers to Malaysia.”

So, what is it now?

Is it 1.5 million Bangladeshis to Malaysia in the next few years, or 1.5 million Bangladeshis heading out to 139 countries?

Divide 1.5 million by 139 and you only get an average of 11,000 per country. What are the chances of Malaysia committing to take in only 11,000 Bangladeshis over the next few years?

If that was the case, why was this fact not clarified when Putrajaya came under fire from various quarters over the foreign labour intake plan?

There can be only two explanations for this – Putrajaya had no clue what it was doing from the get go, which would explain why even senior ministers in the Cabinet were issuing statements that droves of Bangladeshis were headed here.

Or, Riot’s U-turn could be Putrajaya’s strategy for damage control.

If the plan was to bring in such a small number of foreign workers from the start, Putrajaya erred gravely in making a non-issue, a major issue.

It also shows an obvious disconnect between the many levels of government – from the ministries and ministers to their various departments as well as a failure by all involved to articulate a simple matter for public consumption.

The entire issue of the 1.5 million Bangladeshis is a total disaster, right from policy level to implementation, and communication.

Putrajaya owes Malaysians an explanation for this fiasco.

The question is, will they own up to this, or will we get the usual silence that Putrajaya is notorious for, on things that really matter?