hi,
Here's something to think about, as far as working here goes. And legal & illegal workers, and agents, and the % of the working population that are non-Malaysians. And how the Government seeks to control the situation.
Wednesday July 6, 2011 : Making sure amnesty a successQuestion Time By P.GUNASEGARAM
Amnesty must be seen as a move to recognise the dependence of the economy on foreign illegal labour but it has to be part of a process to stop the future rise of illegal labour in the country. In ensuring this, the Govt should do away with agencies for registration of illegal labour.
IT is very heartening to note that it will be possible to bypass agencies to recruit maids from In-donesia but terribly discouraging to note that illegal immigrants will have to use agencies to legitimise their standing under the Govern-ment’s amnesty programme.
If one can dispense with agencies to recruit maids, it should be even easier to dispense with them for amnesties. In fact, if the requirement that amnesty applications be made via approved agents is not withdrawn, it may well jettison the entire amnesty programme.
The success of an amnesty programme depends on how it is implemented.
For that, we need to specify the clear goals of amnesty in the first place and to have a firm idea of how to stop illegal labour from increasing in the future, thereby obviating any need for a future amnesty.
The problem of illegal labour has been with us from the 80s when a former finance minister and plantation owner famously or infamously declared that plantation operations would come to a halt if illegal labour were disallowed.
In 1985, official statistics put the number of illegal immigrants at a mere 20,000 (although private estimates said it amounted to several hundred thousand).
The problem has spiralled out of control and official estimates put the number of illegal immigrants at around two million now, a hundred times the figure 25 years ago.
Unofficial estimates put the num-ber at three million or more. Legal foreign workers are estimated at around two million, meaning up to five million workers out of 12 million or over 40% of all workers could be foreign.
If you raised the total workforce by the three million illegal workers to 15 million, the amount of foreign labour is still too high at a third of the workforce. This is a very grave situation and shows that Malaysia is overly dependent on foreign labour.
Such dependence cannot be weaned away overnight and will require a planned move from high-labour intensity industries and services to a better-trained and more productive workforce over many years.
An amnesty programme should go hand-in-hand with this. There must be a plan put in place to drastically reduce illegal labour in future. Amnesty must be seen as a move to recognise the dependence of the economy on foreign illegal labour but it must also be part of a process to stop the future rise of illegal labour in the country.
It will only be a success if a substantial number of at least half to two-thirds of illegal labour apply for it in the first place and are legalised.
For that to happen, most of them must believe that the Government is serious about cracking down on them after the amnesty expires.
That kind of convincing is not going to be easy. Recall that this is not the first time that an amnesty is being ex-tended to illegal workers.
The Government must show its hand and say precisely how it is going to clamp down on illegal la-bour and strike enough conviction to make illegal labourers want to gain amnesty.
The appointment of agents to register them for fees reportedly varying from RM2,000 to RM4,000 a worker is a major deterrent.
Where is the illegal worker going to get that money? An employer, too, is not likely to pay that kind of money to legalise his workers.
The first condition for an amnesty to be successful is that it must be cheap – next to costless – and the process must be simple and fast, requiring no intermediaries.
Making it expensive for the amnesty seeker is a sure way of ma-king the amnesty a failure.
An amnesty should not be viewed as a means of getting extra income for others.
If we assume two million workers ask for amnesty and if the charge for each of them is just RM2,000, the sum involved is a staggering RM4bil.It is RM8bil if the charge is RM4,000 per worker.
No wonder 1,400 agencies have already expressed interest in registering the illegal workers.
The better way is for the Home Ministry to temporarily employ ad-ditional staff for a month and station them throughout the country to register those who want amnesty.
If one person dealt with 1,000 applications a month, you would require 2,000 employees to register two million illegal workers.
If you paid each a salary even as high as RM4,000 a month, the total expenditure would be just RM8mil, including all other incidental ex-penses.
Allowing for a larger number of staff, it is entirely possible that the exercise can be done for under RM20mil. Why pay agencies RM4bil – 200 times that – to do the same job?
It is clear that that the moves to control the inflow of illegal labour in the past have been an abysmal failure. The underlying problem is that there is no viable plan to reduce the influx of illegal labour in future.
As long as that continues to be the case, there is no compelling reason for anyone to seek amnesty, have their fingerprints taken and enter the official records as a former illegal immigrant.
Right now, the process is straightforward for the illegal immigrant. If you get caught, pay your way out and if that is not possible, get deported.
Back in your home country, just traverse the same route back into Malaysia and work illegally – again.
Unless we do things differently with the amnesty now and demonstrate a strong commitment to keep out illegal labour and at the same reduce the high dependence on foreign labour, we will be doomed to failure yet again.
Ed of Article
Source : thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?col=questiontime&file=/2011/7/6/columnists/questiontime/9034927&sec=Question%20Time
Topic: 20 Hours work allowed (Read 1081 times)
June 20, 2009, 05:32:24 PM