FWCMS: No foul play in 'unauthorised' migrant worker approvals case

The police have found no evidence of criminal involvement in the case of 24 unauthorised users who had approved 24 employer applications for foreign workers.

This was disclosed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its report last week.

The approvals were done through the controversial Foreign Worker Central Management System (FWCMS), owned by private firm Bestinet Sdn Bhd, and used by the government to process migrant worker applications.

In an earlier report in July, the PAC found a weakness in the identification (ID) control management within the FWCMS that was used to approve the Epass (work permit).

It found security and governance issues, where the system was vulnerable to hacking and that user accounts, which should only be held by government staff, were accessed by unauthorised individuals.

‘Technical failure’

However, police investigations found that the approvals for migrant worker applications were actually made by an account belonging to the Human Resources Ministry.

“The records showed the IDs as belonging to individuals who are not ministry officers due to the swapping of users’ sessions which is a technical fault of the system and not caused by a hack into the system itself,” the PAC said in its latest report.

It said the ministry has also verified the validity of the applications coming from all 24 companies.

Cross-reference with FWCMS also confirmed the quota approval had been handled properly and authorised IDs were used in the transactions.

The PAC said police referred their investigation paper to the Attorney-General’s Chambers on July 17 and later classified it as no further action (NFA) as no criminal elements were proven due.

Police found it was caused by the FWCMS technical problem, which has not resulted in losses to any parties, the PAC said.

However, PAC in its remarks viewed the technical weakness issue in the FWCMS seriously as it has led to the assumption that the 24 migrant workers quota was approved by unauthorised users.

It also called for action to be taken to avoid the same mistake from recurring in the future.

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