Over supply of more than 120,00 foreign workers in service sector, says Home Minister

KUALA LUMPUR: There is an over-supply of more than 120,00 foreign workers in the service sector, says Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.

The Home Minister added the service sector also recorded the highest incidences of non-compliance with regulations.

“Even though the forecast by the supervisor body (Home Ministry) was for 20,000 foreign workers, the actual entry of foreign workers by the sector was 142,204,” he told reporters at a press conference after a joint meeting with the Human Resources Ministry on the management of foreign workers on Wednesday (Oct 18).

He said oversupply was discovered following feedback from the inspectorate set up between several government agencies to manage foreign workers.

He added this was likely due to the abuse of foreign worker’s permits resulting in the oversupply in the sector.

“It is unreasonable for me to say that there is no abuse of workers permits but it is not the extent that there was total non-compliance of the regulations,” he said.

He added that action would be taken against employers who had abused the regulations.

He said these workers were employed as cleaners and in laundries, resorts, spas, reflexology, metal scrap yards, cargo caddies and others.

As for non-compliance, he said the inspectorate discovered that the service sector recorded the highest number of incidents.

This, he said, included non-compliance with regard to workers’ accommodation, workplace environment and salary payment among others.

Besides the services sector, he said that there was an oversupply of foreign workers in the manufacturing sector.

He said there were 197,213 foreign workers in this sector although the forecast was for 50,000 workers.

As of October, he added that there were 220,230 foreign workers in the construction sector which is a shortfall of the 301,000 forecasted to the sector.

He also said that there were 53,638 foreign workers in the agriculture sector as of October which is short of the 90,000 needed.

As for the plantation sector, Saifuddin said that 52,123 foreign workers are currently employed in the sector, which is still short of the 57,000 needed.