YOURSAY ‘No, it is not factories moving out of Malaysia. It is Malaysia attracting the right kind of industries that suit our resources.’

Hidden social costs of employing foreign workers

Well Thats Fantastic: The easiest solution to the labour shortage while developing any country is to bring in cheap foreign labour, the only problem is that the rich man becomes dependent on them like a drug addict and it is now impossible to take away the rich man's cheap labour. Let’s not talk about the opportunity lost for all the locals, foreign labour is only good for the few rich elites, they have a negative impact to the rest of us.

Hmmmmmmmm: I believe Malaysia is caught in a vicious cycle. If we do not increase salaries, many locals don't find it worthwhile to work as the cost of working is more than remaining idle. Without higher salaries, we cannot increase prices. Without higher prices, we cannot increase salaries.

Also as one reader mentioned, if we increase prices, we may not be able to compete with the likes of China with their abundant cheap labour. But has anybody wondered why after being one of the economic tigers in the 80s together with Singapore, Hong Kong, etc are we still talking about competing with China?

Shouldn't we already be moving miles away from them? Shouldn't we now be dealing in higher value products? We should have stopped bringing in cheap labour years ago and moved up the value chain but we did not. So now we're doomed to remain in this low income bracket unless there is a drastic change in government policies.

Mosquitobrain: Where did this Deputy Finance Minister Ahmad Maslan pluck the figures from? RM3.032 billions to 132,350 Bangladeshis? Astronomically high lah! My foreign workers earned an average RM1,350 monthly. Take away levy, foods, phone bills, clothing and others, they are left barely with RM600 to be sent home.

Some others, less spendthrift, can save about RM800 at most. Therefore 132,350 paxs times a maximum of RM800 = RM105,800,000. YB, tak tally leh! Macam mana? How to account for the discrepancy? Wrong head count or black money out ke?

Onyourtoes: That is the problem, businessmen with their own agenda and vested interests wanting to talk economics. We either follow China TV model or Swiss watch model, it is our choice (if you don’t understand, go read up). But we must be stupid to follow the China model; we will lose. Not only they have more cheap labour, they are now technologically more advanced than us.

No, it is not factories moving out of Malaysia. It is Malaysia attracting the right kind of industries that suit our resources. With lots of Bangladeshi workers, surely you can’t attract the right industries.

It will only make Malaysia like Bangladesh, you got it? It is about Malaysian industries updating and upgrading the production processes in tandem with our resources. If we do not have abundant supply of labour, don't create industries that are labour-intensive and don't adopt labour-intensive processes.

The Malaysian government talks a lot about Blue Ocean Strategy. What I am saying here is genuine Blue Ocean Strategy, but whether those in government understand or not is another matter.

Awakened: The Indonesians came to Malaysia from the 70s and 80s to work mainly on the construction, plantation and domestic help sectors. The Bangladeshis, Myanmarese and Nepalese started to come in in the 90s and the Vietnamese in the 2000s in factories and other industries. Today, most of the jobs in plantation, construction, factories and restaurants, hotel labourers , petrol kiosks etc have been taken by the foreign workers.

I would say at least half of the jobs can be taken up by the locals. Where have the locals gone to? The majority went to Singapore and some were in the government sectors. The government borrowed money (deficit for 15 years) to create more jobs to employ the locals. These workers would have worked in the private sectors had the government not created these additional jobs for them.

If the government had surplus of money, it is fine. But to borrow and employ them is counter-productive. This outflow is indirectly created by the government' own doing.

Oldman57: All these problems arises from the failed policies of the ruling government - failed agriculture policies, failed manufacturing policies, failed immigration policies, etc. Malaysians are already too cosy and on the way to high income status (illusion only).

Can hire maids, estates cannot find Malaysians willing to do all the hard work and have no choice but to hire foreigners, manufacturers find Malaysians not productive enough because there are easier way to cari makan, etc.

Fourtan: We must ask what is the source of wealth of any country today. The answer is ultimately its citizens. Not only are Malaysians losing their low-level skills to this influx of foreign workers, high-level skills are not nurtured here and if they are, they are pushed to migrate. A critical mass of skillsets will never develop here. This is a road to perdition for Malaysia.

4dpeople: Do you think RM1,000 is sufficient for a Malaysian to survive these days? You could have had two different pay scales, a higher one for locals and a lower one for foreigners, while working on increasing your number of locals. No one loves being unemployed if the offer is worth taking my dear friend. Before you point your finger at people, ask yourself how hard have you tried and what you have done, but my toes laugh when you say RM1,000 is the solution.

SS Dhaliwal: These are the phantom Bangladeshi voters who will be used in the next coming GE, but by then they will be citizens still sending money back to Bangladesh.

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