Business group schools ministry on foreign worker allocation issue

 

Many employers were disgruntled after being turned away from the human resources ministry’s poorly organised interviews for foreign worker quota applications.

PETALING JAYA: The human resources ministry “has a lot to learn”, the Small and Medium Enterprises Association Malaysia (Samenta) said following the fiasco over employers’ applications for foreign worker quotas.

Samenta chairman William Ng said M Saravanan’s ministry should emulate the health ministry, specifically in its management of the nationwide vaccination exercise.

Speaking to FMT, he noted that the health ministry organised three rounds of inoculation involving millions of people and that there was hardly any report of an untoward incident.

He questioned the wisdom of interviewing employers from other states in Putrajaya and said he wondered why something as simple as scheduling appointments seemed so difficult, especially since the system had been outsourced to a private company.

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“If the problem is with the private company, perhaps it is time to review the service agreement,” he said.

Ng noted that employers “turned up in droves” for their quota applications and said this indicated a “trust deficit” between them and the human resources ministry.

He urged the ministry to improve its communication with employers in order to rebuild trust.

“The labour issue remains the number one barrier to Malaysia regaining lost ground from the pandemic, and we cannot afford to let go of the ball,” he said.

Retail tycoon Ameer Ali Mydin also expressed disappointment with the ministry’s handling of the incident, saying it should regard the episode as a lesson and not repeat it.

He said the ministry should have had separate sessions for scheduled and non-scheduled appointments and should have conducted the interviews at state level since “it has offices all over the country”.

This would also cut costs for the employers, he said.

Ameer urged the ministry to temporarily beef up its workforce or “absorb people from other agencies” to help in the interviews and to work with employers to expedite the approval process.

“I’m sure that all industries want to work with the ministry to ease the worker shortage,” he said.

Yesterday, FMT reported that many employers were left disgruntled after being turned away from the human resources ministry when they were unable to be interviewed.

They had queued for hours, some from as early as 6am.

Many had to have their interview dates postponed because of the large number that turned up. - FMT