Employment agencies unhappy with new migrant recruitment platform

Having survived a complete shutdown on migrant recruitment and zero income for two years, private employment agencies who have yet to commence business are up in arms over demands of hefty deposits for every new recruit.

They are seeing red over demands as high as RM10,000 for every new recruit from what may be a new government-appointed company, set up to manage the portal for migrant recruitment and placement in Malaysia.

Malaysiakini revealed yesterday that services provided by Bestinet Sdn Bhd, which managed Malaysia’s Foreign Worker Centralised Management System (FWCMS) may now be provided by 3S Asia Sdn Bhd and executed through its 3sMalaysia.com portal.

An industry source had revealed that the FWCMS was no longer favoured as the sole digital platform to be used in Malaysia’s link-up with Indonesia through the One Channel System (OCS) in recruiting and placing domestic workers.

However, the new web portal was no longer accessible and it was unclear if 3sMalaysia.com was facing technical glitches or was under maintenance as it opened to an "Error 522" page which indicated that its server was inaccessible.

Having met 3S Asia officials recently, National Association of Human Resources Malaysia (Pusma) president Zarina Ismail said they were very disappointed that no discussions were held with government-registered private employment agencies before the operational flow for the One Channel System was concluded.

While she hoped the Human Resources Ministry would be open to discussion to iron out the numerous contentious provisions set out in the new system, Zarina said the deposits demanded would put many of her members out of business.

“We are expected to pay high deposits even before identifying a potential worker,” she lamented.

Inflated costs

Zarina said although the high deposits were risks for the private employment agencies, they were also assured that the risk management throughout the process would be taken over by an insurance company.

“However, nothing was clear at this point. But I am not sure which insurance company would want to take the risk of a domestic worker running away or any other inadvertences,” she explained.

She also confirmed that the 3S Malaysia portal would process all payments throughout the One Channel System but questioned the Human Resource Development Corporation’s role in the training of migrant domestic workers.

“This would only inflate costs. Workers could be trained in their country of origin or APS (private employment agencies) associations could provide the training.

“Certify the associations to train them to keep costs low,” she argued.

Another contributor to the inflation of costs for the employment of domestic workers was the fixed quarantine centres under the FWCMS system at a fixed fee.

“This prevents employers from using quarantine centres identified by the Health Ministry and again increases the cost of hiring a domestic worker,” she explained. - Mkini