Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan has warned employers who cut their foreign workers’ salaries to cover the costs of bringing them into Malaysia and said the government will cancel their quotas if they do so.
He added that employers who bring in foreign workers must bear all costs, including accommodation and flight fares so that there will be zero costs incurred by the workers.
As for matters about agents in the workers’ home country, he said his ministry cannot interfere with that.
“Employers must not bear the costs only to have it replaced by cutting the workers’ salaries later. If there were complaints filed by the workers through the digital application Working For Workers, we will cancel their employers quotas.” he was quoted as saying by Bernama.
Meanwhile, Saravanan also denied that there were protests by employment agencies in Bangladesh when he led a ministerial delegation to the Bangladesh-Malaysia Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting in Dhaka on Thursday (2 June).
He said he was given a good welcome instead and managed to hold fruitful discussions on the entry of Bangladeshi workers into Malaysia.
“I met with 8 Bangladeshi ministers including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In principle, we agreed to bring in Bangladeshi workers for several sectors such as plantation, agriculture, manufacturing and development,” he said.
He added that he even met with his Bangladeshi counterpart, Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmed at the JWG meeting.
On Thursday (2 June), it was reported that the Bangladesh International Recruitment Agencies’ Association held a protest against Malaysia’s stand of allowing only 25 Bangladesh recruitment agents.
Meanwhile, Saravanan said Malaysia still adhered to the stance of allowing only 25 agents in the recruitment of new workers into the country, and the ministry had set up a committee to study and fine-tune 1,520 agent applications.
When asked about the delay in the entry of Indonesian workers into Malaysia, Saravanan said that their entry, which was supposed to begin on May 31, had to be postponed because Indonesia’s minister in charge had other matters to attend to.
