Ensure newly arrived workers have jobs, Bangladesh High Comm tells Labour Dept

KUALA LUMPUR – The Bangladesh High Commission has called for Malaysia’s Labour Department to verify the demand for workers from the country amid reports that its citizens are arriving here but are left stranded without jobs.

It said the department, which has branches nationwide, should do more to verify the demand for Bangladeshi workers, as well as to ensure that their work environments, housing and wages are up to standard.

“It is practically impossible for the embassy to visit 100% of the projects or factories and the thousands of recruitment institutions. This is only possible for the Malaysian Labour Department.

“If the approval process of recruitment of foreign workers by the Malaysian government is transparent, then no worker should be unemployed,” the high commission said in a statement on Facebook.

It said it had the latest information that the Labour Department approved the recruitment of 358,892 Bangladeshi workers, of which 134,595 had arrived in Malaysia.

However, it noted that from media reports and personal stories, some workers did not have jobs after arriving.

As such, the high commission said it took its own initiative, with the help of Malaysian authorities, to verify employers’ demands for labour and to ensure that the newly arrived workers secured jobs.

However, it said the number of workers who are unemployed after arriving here “is very small”, but that it would continue working with Malaysian authorities to ensure that all “legally arriving Bangladeshi workers do not become a victim of confusion in Malaysia”.

Last month, Human Resources Minister V. Sivakumar said further approvals for migrant workers had been temporarily frozen so that employers who received approvals could begin bringing them into the country immediately.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail also said last month that some 20% or 180,000 migrant workers had arrived out of the nearly one million applications approved.He said some employers had applied for foreign workers beforehand but faced financial challenges to bring them in. – The Vibes, April 16, 2023