25-agency limit final, stop bullying us, Saravanan tells Bangladeshi groups

 

Bangladeshi groups protesting against the decision to appoint only 25 recruitment agencies in Dhaka in early June.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s decision to appoint 25 Bangladeshi agencies for the recruitment of workers is final, said human resources minister M Saravanan.

He told groups in Dhaka protesting against this decision “not to bully Malaysia”, noting that other countries had appointed fewer agencies.

Appearing to be peeved with the reaction in Bangladesh, he asked why these groups were picking on Malaysia when it had appointed 25 agencies, an increase over the 10 that were allowed under the previous memorandum of understanding (MoU).

Saravanan said Singapore had reduced the number from 14 to six while Hong Kong had fewer than 10. There are about 1,500 recruitment agencies in Bangladesh.

“So why are they protesting against our decision? When we allowed all the agencies to be involved in 2008, it resulted in 100,000 Bangladeshis being cheated and loitering on the streets of Kuala Lumpur without jobs and food,” he told FMT.

He said they even surrounded the Bangladeshi high commission so much so that its officials were not able to leave the premises for three days, until police managed to send them all to detention depots.

He said employers in need of workers then had to go to the centres to recruit workers.

“Do they want this mess to happen again? We want to ensure their workers are not cheated by limiting the number. It’s not for the benefit of any individual as they allege,” he said.

On allegations by the Dhaka anti-syndicate groups that most of the 25 agencies were controlled by one Mohd Amin Abdul Nor who, they claimed, was well-connected to Malaysian leaders, Saravanan said: “He was from Bangladesh and is now a Malaysian citizen. He is the one who actually supplied the Foreign Workers Centralised Management System to Malaysia many years ago. He is not involved in recruiting workers.”

He said only 10,000 workers were brought in under a government-to-government arrangement from 2009 to 2012 when the attestation was done by the Bangladesh high commission.

“The 2016 model, where we limited it to 10 agencies, was the most successful with a high number of workers coming in with jobs guaranteed.”

25-agency limit approved in principle last year

Saravanan said he submitted a Cabinet paper on the recruitment in December last year where he suggested increasing the number of agencies from 10 to 25, explaining that a “free-for-all” would result if many arrived here without jobs.

“The previous MoU also did not have any specific number. Why did they not object to the previous practice? I think the groups which are protesting must have failed to be on the list,” he said.

He said the government planned to increase the number in stages once the current process was found to be successful, and no source country could dictate to Malaysia on who it wanted on the list.

“I have explained our stand to both the Bangladeshi prime minister and the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment minister who understand and accept our position,” he said.

Asked about plans to get more Malaysians to work in the plantation sector, Saravanan said the government had placed advertisements on its MyFutureJobs portal but not even one had applied.

“They just don’t want to work in the difficult, dangerous and dirty sectors. So we need the foreign workers,” he said.

He said he expected the first batch of workers to arrive at the end of the month, as the recruitment system was already in place. - FMT