Don't blame foreign workers for every crime, says Zahid

PARLIAMENT Do not place the blame for crime rates in the country squarely on foreigners alone, Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said today.

Zahid (right) told the Dewan Rakyat that only 10 to 15 percent of serious crimes in the country were committed by foreign workers in the country, while a large majority of the crimes were still carried out by Malaysians.

He was responding to a supplementary question from Fong Kui Lun (DAP-Bukit Bintang) on the numbers of crimes carried out by the foreign workers in the country.

Zahid said that officially, there are 2.1 million foreign workers in the country.

New ID system for foreign workers being tested

Zahid also announced that the government was testing a new system to enable it to differentiate foreign workers according to different sectors they are supposed to work in.

This comes in the form of a variety of colours in bar codes in the identification cards of the foreign workers, which would be issued once they are in the country.

If they are working in the agriculture industry, they will have a different colour from the bar codes of those in the construction industry, he said.

Zahid said that this would help the government monitor the movements of the foreign workers and impose fines on those who change their work sectors while in the country.

"The fine will be US$10,000 (RM31,483)," he said.

The government will not bear the cost for the cards, which will have to be borne by employers and the workers.

"Here in Malaysia, it is still cheap (in fees for a foreign worker). In Singapore, there is a levy for every foreign worker who enters the country to work," he said.