Gov't lifts restrictions on hiring Indonesian workers

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The government will lift restrictions o­n the hiring of Indonesian workers to plug labour shortages in the construction and manufacturing sectors, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday.

The move came just over a year after the government clamped down o­n the recruitment of Indonesians, allowing them to work o­nly as maids and plantation workers after recent riots.

It said it would look to Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Burma, Laos, the Philippines and India to supply the labour market.

Abdullah, who heads the cabinet committee of foreign workers, said there was now o­ne million non-Malaysian workers in the country, but demand for Indonesian labour had surged in the construction, infrastructure development and manufacturing sectors.

Labour shortage

"We need a lot of workers. Demand for houses is increasing. The industry is requesting us to bring in Indonesia workers. They are skillful and they have a common language with Malaysia," he told reporters.

"We did not want them before because they were too many of them so we diversified the source of countries, but because of the demand we are taking them back again."

The committee would submit a report to cabinet o­n the matter for approval, he added.

The labour shortage was partly caused by a crackdown last year after Malaysia in August imposed harsh new penalties, including caning, for illegal immigrants.

Some 468,000 illegal immigrants had earlier returned home voluntarily during a four-month amnesty period, almost half of them construction workers.

Malaysian builders in November warned they may lose RM1.2 billion in late delivery penalty charges because of a severe labour shortage caused by the expulsion of mainly Indonesian illegal immigrants, who made up 70 percent of workers in the sector. - AFP



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