Foreign workers to be limited to construction, agricultural, and plantation sectors

PARLIAMENT | The government plans to limit the participation of foreign workers to just the construction, agricultural, and plantation sectors, said Deputy Human Resources Minister Awang Hashim in Parliament today.

“In other sectors, we want the jobs to be filled by local workers. This will be part of our guidelines to reduce the intake of foreign workers,” said Awang who is Pendang MP.

"The government intends to reduce the number of foreign workers of around 2.1 million who were registered with the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Human Resources," he added.

He was responding to a question by Lubok Antu MP Jugah Muyang who asked what plans the government had to reduce the number of foreign workers in the country and to return more jobs to Malaysians who were suffering the economic impact of the movement control order that was implemented to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

Awang (above) said that the regulated minimum wage of RM1,200 per month in major cities in Malaysia was not being applied throughout the country as there were some places still applying RM1,100 as the minimum wage.

"The Cabinet had approved in principle a bill to raise it all to RM1,200 to standardise the minimum wage around the country and a bill will be tabled to reflect this, hopefully within this parliamentary sitting," he added.

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