KUALA LUMPUR – The nation’s foreign workers system was ruined by Pakatan Harapan (PH), especially DAP leaders, during their time in Putrajaya, leading to the current manpower shortages experienced by the country today, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan.
He said even before the Covid-19 pandemic began, PH had imposed a moratorium on the intake of foreign workers from Bangladesh in September 2019, and refused to renew memoranda of understanding (MoU) with other source countries.
Responding to DAP chairman Lim Guan Eng’s recent criticism of him, Saravanan said PH was the root cause of the nation’s foreign labour shortage as it minimised the entry of Bangladeshi workers when it held federal power for 22 months.
Saravanan said the current “game”, which was compounded by the pandemic, only began when the country re-opened its borders on April 1, 2022.
The Tapah MP added that from April this year to date, all related MoUs had been resolved with source countries, while the issuance of quotas for all relevant agencies and stakeholders had already been expedited.
Saravanan also said that Lim may be harping on the issue of foreign labour shortages, but the actual employers of the workers had not raised any grievances with the ministry.
“I don’t see any big players like Sime Darby or FGV making any complaints. They have not made any complaints about not receiving any quotas at all,” Saravanan said in an interview with The Vibes and several other media outlets yesterday.
“During PH’s administration, not a single MoU was renewed even though the one with Bangladesh had lapsed during its time. It should not take 22 months to renew any MoU,” he said, referring to the duration of PH’s reign as the federal government from May 2018 to February 2020.
Yesterday, Saravanan had set October 5 for Lim to provide evidence that the former had failed to address the country’s migrant labour shortage.
Saravanan said Lim’s recent calls for him to resign if he can find shortcomings in the ministry’s handling of the matter showed that the DAP leader did not understand the ministry’s role.
The minister also said a similar invitation was extended to DAP’s Beruas MP Ngeh Koo Ham, who has been a staunch critic of the ministry.
On Monday, Lim took to Facebook to remind Saravanan about their resignation challenge to each other, saying he had waited 10 days to hear from the minister on the matter.
The reminder came after Lim accepted Saravanan’s challenge to scrutinise his ministry for any shortcomings in addressing the acute shortage of workers in the country on September 15.
In the post, Lim castigated Saravanan for sheer incompetence for failing to answer or to justify his “pathetic” 12% success rate in getting approved foreign workers to enter Malaysia.
Lim said the figure was highlighted by the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, which estimated only 47,000 foreign workers for all sectors have entered Malaysia, or 12% of the 385,000 approvals by Saravanan since earlier this year.
Self-serving complaints?
Saravanan claimed that Ngeh had made complaints about the ministry’s alleged inability to carry out its role, but had made a personal request for manpower approval.
“I can print out everything that was demanded from us. It’s all personal, but ostensibly a dramatic (ploy) that they are requesting on behalf of the people,” he alleged.
He said he did not know if the request was for the DAP man’s own purpose or as an agent.
“I can show him (Lim) the companies that (the) Beruas MP had asked me (about),” Saravanan said.
He explained that the approvals for up to 400,000 foreign workers to enter the country starting April this year were meant for a one-and-a-half-year timeframe.
He also noted that it is impractical for the approved number of foreigners to come into the country in the span of months as this depends on the daily number of flights coming into Malaysia from the countries involved, among other factors.
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“My job ends after the approval of the quota. After that, my job starts again when the workers come in (to the country) to look after their welfare.”
Saravanan added that his role is to approve quotas for foreign workers, and to look after their welfare when they enter the country, but anything in between does not fall under his jurisdiction.
“Why is he blaming me? Have there been any official complaints from employers? You don’t even know my role, so how can you evaluate my performance?” he said.
"Guan Eng should stop issuing statements and being a hero in the media, and come here (instead) to show the evidence on where we went wrong.”
Ministry has been ‘helpful’
Meanwhile, a spokesman from FGV Holdings Bhd said the company is not experiencing any issues with gaining approvals for foreign workers, adding that it has not made any complaints to the ministry on the matter.
The spokesman said that so far, FGV has received approvals for 10,000 workers and that 4,000 have arrived in the country.
“We plan to reach the target (of 10,000 workers) by November and there has been no issue on the matter so far,” the spokesman, who declined to be named, said.
“We have no grievances and we are following the procedure. The approvals have all been granted, and we are currently in the process of the intake. The ministry has been very helpful.” – The Vibes, September 28, 2022
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