The Malaysian Home Ministry will take the lead to come up with a new system of hiring migrant workers in a move aimed at managing its foreign labour force, according to the Malaysian media.

Having signed a labour pact with Nepal, Malaysia, the biggest labour-receiving country of Nepali workers, is planning an integrated system for inducting foreign workers to its market.

The Malaysian Home Ministry will take the lead to come up with a new system of hiring migrant workers in a move aimed at managing its foreign labour force, according to the Malaysian media.

Deputy Home Minister Mohammed Azis Jamman said that Kuala Lumpur was working on setting up a system that will streamline the administration and hiring of foreign workers in the country, reported the Free Malaysia Today, a local news portal. “We are in the process of creating a single system to manage foreign workers,” minister Jamman was quoted by the Free Malaysia Today as saying. “This is ease hiring of these workers in the sectors that need foreign workers.”

Meanwhile, the Malaysian government has reiterated to act tough on illegal migrant workers.

The Southeast Asian country, which currently hosts more than 1.7 million foreign workers with permit, is also battling with thousands of undocumented workers, including Nepalis. Thousands of Nepali workers who had violated the immigration rules in Malaysia had returned home utilising the general amnesty offered by the Malaysian government to undocumented workers.

According to the Nepal Embassy in Malaysia, nearly 15,000 illegal Nepali workers availed the amnesty before the deadline ended on August 30. Malaysian Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran, who was in Nepal last month, had said the government had no intention of extending the amnesty period.

Deputy Home Minister Azis echoed Kulasegaran’s sentiments, saying that such a decision would send the wrong signal to employers and foreign workers. “It would seem as if we are encouraging them to overstay in our country as they would wait for legalisation programmes to be held,” the Free Malaysia Today reported Azis as saying.

Published on: 6 December 2018 | The Kathmandu Post