DAP's Seputeh MP Teresa Kok has questioned the Home Ministry's decision to raise the fees for foreign worker permit renewals to be done online beginning early this month, saying that the extra fee is a burden to employers.

 
In a statement today, Kok pointed out that beginning Jan 5, employers have to cough up RM38 in additional fees to the initial RM125 they were paying in order to renew the permits online, via MyEG.
 
Those who do not get a bank guaranteed insurance for their foreign workers from MyEG also have to pay an extra RM58 per application.
 
"Is this a fair and reasonable move to employers and other insurance companies? Why such monopoly for MyEG?" Kok asked.
 
"Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi must therefore explain why the unfair move as well as to resolve the other following issues which had also been raised by many employers," she added.
 
The Ministry has said that the new fees are to cover operational costs and management, but Kok ( right ) demanded that the manual immigration counters for renewal stay open as not all employers are conversant enough with IT to renew permits online.
 
"Employers include farmers are not IT savvy. Allowing only online application will pose a burden to these employers," Kok said.
 
She also questioned why cheques issued to renew permits now had to be addressed to MyEG, a government concessionaire company, instead of to the Immigration director general as they had done in the past.
 
"The workers' levies paid by employers differ from industry to industry. The average rate of levy per worker is RM1,755. Since there are about 2.1 million foreign workers in the country, annual levy collection can come up RM4.4 billion," she said.
 
"Can Zahid explain how long it will take for MyEG to transfer the collection to the government and why should the employers not issue cheques to immigration director general?" she added.