New recruitment system delaying intake of foreign workers, says Zuraida

 

Plantation industries and commodities minister Zuraida Kamaruddin says the Foreign Worker Centralised Management System is better and more organised.

KUALA LUMPUR: Plantation industries and commodities minister Zuraida Kamaruddin says the delay in the intake of foreign workers is due to the new recruitment system that will be able to monitor the workers once they enter the country.

Zuraida told the Dewan Rakyat the Foreign Worker Centralised Management System (FWCMS) had caused a “slight delay”, but maintained that it was a more organised system.

She said the intake of workers would be smoother by this month.

“If this system is implemented flawlessly, workers that enter the country can no longer simply switch jobs because we will be tracking them (through the system),” she said.

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She was responding to Salim Shariff (BN-Jempol) who asked the minister to explain the government’s measures to resolve the shortage of migrant workers in the plantation sector, as well as to reduce its dependency on foreign labour.

The FWCMS is an online integrated centralised system for processing the recruitment of workers from all source countries. It links various stakeholders in the process of the recruitment, management and monitoring of foreign workers in Malaysia.

It was developed by Bestinet Sdn Bhd, an information technology company.

The company is currently being probed by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over allegations of irregularities in the selection of 25 Bangladeshi companies as agents.

Human resources minister M Saravanan said there could be a slight delay in processing applications because of the MACC probe, but added that “overall there is no effect”. - FMT