‘Who will be responsible for foreign worker management system?’

The Human Resources Ministry and the Home Ministry should discuss and decide on who will be fully responsible for the foreign worker management system without neglecting the needs of all stakeholders.

According to the Auditor-General's Report 2022, the system used should have interoperability, scalability and sustainability features to carry out foreign worker management processes seamlessly, ensuring effective management, monitoring and control of foreign workers.

This is after the management of foreign workers through the Foreign Workers Integrated Management System (ePPAx) and the Foreign Workers Centralised Management System (FWCMS) under the Human Resources Ministry was found to be unsatisfactory.

According to the report, the ePPAx system, with a development cost of RM19.39 million, cannot be used optimally due to limited use in the qualification quota recommendation process through only the issuance of certificates by the Department of Labour of Peninsular Malaysia.

“Besides this, the quota approval process by the Home Ministry’s Local Approval Centre (OSC) is also not implemented using the OSC Module in the ePPAx System, and the cabinet’s decision to use FWCMS for the management of foreign workers.

“There are also weaknesses in the management of the ePPAx system, namely system settings being changed, and quota applications made out of the Labour Recalibration Programme period,” the report, presented in the Dewan Rakyat today, stated.

The report also stated that the achievements under FWCMS’ implementation cannot be assessed yet because all 12 complete modules are only used for one source country, Bangladesh, compared to the 15 source countries allowed.

In addition, there are weaknesses in the implementation of the system, such as agreements yet to be signed, government rights that cannot be determined, unclear implementation methods and direction, early filtering functions, deactivation of quota eligibility calculation and irregular control of user identification.

The audit report also recommends that both ministries implement an efficient, transparent and integrity-focused foreign worker management process that includes all foreign worker management processes that occur within and outside the system, taking into account the rights and jurisdiction of the involved agencies.

The audit also proposed that both ministries ensure that the system used has quota limit control as a mechanism for controlling the approval of foreign workers according to the country's labour needs and that the foreign worker management system complies with government regulations to guarantee the rights and interests of government and national security.

- Bernama