M'sia to demand foreign workers speak Malay or English

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Foreign workers brought into the country under government-to-government labour agreements will be required to speak either Malay or English, Human Resources minister Fong Chan Onn said today.

Fong said countries sending workers to Malaysia would be required to provide language courses so that their citizens could communicate with local employers, the Bernama news agency reported.

"Before we sign the government-to-government labour intake agreement with any country, they would be first required to educate their workers in terms of language and this would be made a prerequisite," he said.

Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers are employed in Malaysia, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines, and until recently many of them were illegal immigrants.

Some 468,000 of them left during a four-month amnesty ahead of the introduction of harsh new penalties, including whipping, on Aug 1.

The government then announced that any new intake of foreign labour, except for maids, would have to be through a government-to-government labour agreement.

Home Ministry secretary-general Aseh Che Mat said last month that the government had approved the recruitment of 369,021 foreign construction workers through its "fast-lane" programme to replace those who left during the amnesty.

Most foreign construction recruits are from neighbouring Indonesia, where the national language is similar to that in Malaysia.

Other countries said to have shown interest in sending their workers to this relatively developed Southeast Asian nation are Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, India, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, the Philippines and Laos. AFP



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