Government to consider employing illegal immigrants as foreign workers

Bernama

CYBERJAYA: The government will consider the possibility of employing illegal immigrants as foreign workers to meet the high demand from employers.

Human Resource Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam said these were among 51 suggestions discussed by a special laboratory set up by the ministry to deal with the issue of foreign workers.

He said the ministry also discussed ways to address problems on abuse of foreign workers, especially domestic maids.

“The ministry is faced with two major problems in dealing with illegal immigrants in the country, namely the existence of illegal workers and the high demand for workers by employers.

“Because of the high demand, illegal immigrants continue to enter the country. We are looking for a suitable mechanism to deal with this effectively,” he told a media conference at the launch of Lim Kok Wing University of Creative Technology’s Academy of Creativity and Innovation here Friday.

Subramaniam said the number of illegal workers in the country was still high and attributed this to the high demand from employers.

In a related development, Subramaniam said the payment structure imposed by maid agencies in Indonesia and Malaysia still varies and this posed problems for the people in the country to get maids from Indonesia.

Until the payment structure is resolved, there will be problems getting maids from Indonesia, he added.

On efforts made to obtain maids from other countries, he said Cambodia had been identified as a new source, besides South Thailand, the Philippines and Myanmar.