0 Comments | New Straits Times, Feb 8, 2010
MOST estimates put the number of foreign workers at 2.1 million for 2008. In January of that year, we were told that the Economic Planning Unit had worked out a plan to cut the number to 1.5 million by 2015. In the same year, the human resources minister stated that the aim was to whittle it down by at least 500,000 by this year. After chairing the cabinet committee on foreign workers and illegal workers in July last year, the deputy prime minister said the government was working to cap the number at 1.8 million by this year. Whatever the variants in the targets – and the unknown number of illegal immigrants – as the figure has dipped to 1.6 million, according to the human resources minister, it would seem that the government has succeeded in reducing the number of foreign workers.
However, though the direction of government policy has been evident, it is less clear whether the reduction has been wholly the result of government initiatives. If the increased demand for foreign workers from glove manufacturers, furniture makers, plastic producers, and electronic factories is any indication, it would suggest that it is the ebb and flow of the economic tide that determines the flux of immigrant labour. When the economy slowed down and production stalled, employers did not renew the work permits and sent them back. But now that the economy is recovering and production has picked up, the manufacturers are scrambling to recruit foreign workers – and the government has relaxed the rules to let 100,000 of them in, just as it had tightened the regulations when exports fell and lay-offs climbed.
For now, at least, when “business is booming”, it would seem that “we cannot deny them” the foreign workers that they need. However business-friendly the concession may be, it is nevertheless troubling that the government has given in to pressure on this and other occasions, such as the time it put the decision to double the foreign worker levy on the back burner
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