The statement made by Human Resources Minister Dr S. Subramaniam that doubling the levy on foreign workers will discourage the hiring of foreign workers and increase the salaries of locals is ignorantly simplistic.

I own a restaurant in Petaling Jaya and have done so for over 20 years. Over that period of time, we have hired both Malaysian and Indonesian staff. The working conditions for everyone is exactly the same, whether the restaurant manager or the kitchen staff/waiters.

It is a small business in which everyone does every thing that needs to be done. There is no task too menial even for the owner of the restaurant – whether it is washing dishes, peeling onions or scrubbing the toilets – with hands thoroughly washed between tasks.

When we first started the business, we hired locals. They would start off without much problem but after a while, they would begin their nonsense. When business began to pick up and become good, the cooks would start talking about wanting to leave – their way of ‘renegotiating’ their pay. I put up with this ‘blackmail’ by ignoring it twice but the third time, I told the cook she could leave immediately and paid her her salary to date.

That brought a temporary end to that sort of talk from the other cooks when they realised that I was not going to be held to ransom. I then went into the kitchen to cook until a new cook was hired – which the other cooks did not like as the boss was now always in the kitchen. The restaurant was always under threat of sudden staff departures though.

Then, with the influx of Indonesians, we began to hire Indonesian staff alongside the local staff. The Indonesians were hardworking and never made threats about wanting to leave. Perhaps it was because they realised from prior experience that we were good employers.

There was one girl who was a Muslim and she said that at her previous job, her employers ate pork all the time and if she didn’t eat pork, she would have to go hungry. They also deducted medical, food and accommodation from her pay leaving her very little. She also worked longer hours at her previous job.

When the government began to make it harder to hire Indonesians, we had no choice but to look to local labour again. Business was good – it was the mid-90s and there was an economic boom and we needed the staff. If things were shaky with the local staff before we started hiring Indonesians, things only got worse with local staff after hiring Indonesian workers.

Save for the restaurant manager who has been with the restaurant for 15 years, the local staff do not stay long – some for as short as half a day. Our foreign workers are Indonesian women. We’ve hired both male and female local staff - and the men are more problematic.

The local women work harder than the local men but not as hard as the Indonesian women. When the local women quit, the excuse is invariably that their fathers/husbands don’t like them coming back late. This is despite the fact that the working hours were made known at the time of hire.

The locals are inevitably late to arrive and the first to leave – sometimes through the back door before close of business, leaving the end-of-the-day clean up for the foreign workers to do. The local men have come to work hung over and reeking of stale cigarettes, looking unkempt.

The local men are happy to sit there, smoking (despite the rule no smoking in the restaurant) while someone (invariably the Indonesian women) is doing something and call out helpful ‘advice’ on how to do the job without lifting a finger to help.

The job scope is explained by the restaurant manager when the person comes for the job interview. There is nodding and agreement. Things change though once they start work. They ask for pay advances even before they’ve worked two days and leave before reimbursing the advance. The local men are fussy about what they will do. They refuse to take customers’ orders.

They will serve food and drinks but refuse to clear the dirty plates or wipe the tables because it’s malu . They will not clean the toilets – malu . They don’t want to peel onions – bau . They won’t vacuum the carpet – ‘women’s work’. They won’t do things the way they are shown to do because apparently they know better so even training them to do the job becomes a problem.

The men are not happy about being told what to do by a woman – a problem since the restaurant manager and I are both women. They show their displeasure by making the customer’s food inedible by adding too much salt or chilli or by just refusing to work, leaving the Indonesian girls to do everything. They are disruptive and when their attitude and lack of work ethic demoralises the team, it becomes a serious issue.

Local staff are unreliable but perhaps what is most disturbing about hiring locals is their health. The Indonesian staff have to pass a medical examination before they get a work visa. At the restaurant, we used to require all new local hires to go for a medical test before they started work.

However, this has backfired on us because if the person failed their medical test (and therefore was not hire-able), we would be short of the few hundred ringgit that the medical test cost - with no means of recovering it from the person.

And when I say fail the medical test, I mean, be diagnosed with venereal diseases like syphilis (the person was 19 and apparently unaware that he had contracted syphillis) and herpes. We have had a few with hepatitis B, one with TB, and quite a few more whose urine tests showed narcotics use.

Our strategy after that was instead of sending them for medical tests immediately, we would hire them, telling them that they would be sent for a medical test at some point, the cost of which will be deducted from their pay. If they show up for work after that, we monitor them and their behaviour.

After two or three days, the restaurant manager would casually bring up the medical test and remind the staff member that they have to take one. Many have disappeared that night without notice. We consider ourselves lucky if they haven’t stolen anything before their departure.

The pay we offer to our local hires is more than our foreign staff – the difference is considerably more than the cost of the foreign workers’ levy. Like our foreign workers, the package includes meals, share of the tips, accommodation and medical. If the Indonesian staff wanted to leave without giving me notice, they could because they have their passports but they have never done that to me.

Once upon a time, we were willing to pay the extra that the locals demanded because business was good and we could afford it but now, the problems they create are just not worth it. To be fair, not every local we have hired has been a nightmare. However, the dreadful ones we have hired far outnumber the gems.

The restaurant is not just a business but a passion. In over 20 years of business, I have customers who have become good personal friends. We have seen the children who came in with their parents grow up and become parents themselves. We have been the venue where couples have had their first dates; men have proposed to their girlfriends; where they have had their engagement dinners; post-wedding refreshments, full-moon parties and reunions.

If Subramaniam thinks that raising the levy on foreign workers will lead to more locals being hired in the restauraunt sector, he is sorely mistaken. They have a poor work ethic and are not worth the aggravation. If I can’t afford the foreign worker levy, I would rather close my business with my restaurant’s reputation intact than be under threat from my local workers of a walk out, leaving me without a workforce.

I’m sure I’m not the only business owner who feels this way. The butcher, fishmonger, egg-supplier, vegetable supplier, sundry shop owner - even TNB and Puas -would have to look elsewhere for their income.