Guan Eng accepts Saravanan's 'I quit' challenge over labour shortage woes

 

DAP chairperson Lim Guan Eng has accepted the challenge by Human Resources Minister M Saravanan to try to find flaws in his attempt to overcome the severe shortage in the labour force.

Depending on whether Lim (above) succeeds, one of them will have to resign from their respective positions.

“As the DAP national chairperson, I accept Saravanan’s challenge to scrutinise and find flaws in his attempts to overcome the severe shortage of workers and one of us will resign if flaws can or cannot be found.

“I will await Saravanan to set the date to fulfil this challenge of his and including critical issues and other weaknesses that have delayed the intake of foreign workers,” Lim said in a statement today.

Human Resources Minister M Saravanan

Saravanan had thrown the challenge at Lim on Sept 13, saying Lim should resign as DAP chairperson if he is unable to find anything wrong with how the ministry is addressing the labour shortage.

“If he does find something wrong, then I will resign instead,” Saravanan reportedly said.

This comes after Lim had been criticising the human resources minister over the shortage of workers in the country over the past few weeks.

‘Baseless personal attacks’

In his statement today, Lim said Saravanan should not be trying to shift the attention from the issue at hand by resorting to “baseless personal attacks”.

Instead, he said the minister should be trying to handle the issue with facts and figures to address concerns raised by employers.

“So far Saravanan has not answered nor given an explanation about the 12 percent success rate, that is just saddening, in getting foreign workers to come to Malaysia,” said Lim, who is also the Bagan MP.

He said it was not him but the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA) who first raised the issue of the acute shortage of workers in the country.

MPOA estimated that only 47,000 foreign workers have entered Malaysia or 12 percent of the 385,000 approved applications since January 2022 in all industry sectors.

“What is the point of Saravanan claiming that they have approved almost 400,000 foreign workers to join the workforce here when they still cannot enter the country?

“This is just another empty talk by an incompetent minister,” Lim said.

Saravanan cannot simply let go of the issue simply because he believes his task ends with approving the applications, he added.

Lim said the minister must ensure the approvals are carried out to the end or there would be no point in him giving the approvals.

“The severe labour shortage has resulted in a loss of RM33.5 billion for the plantation, rubber glove and auto spare parts industries alone. Other industries will also record billions of ringgit of losses.

“When will the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers enter the country as promised?” he asked. - Mkini