Malaysia takes new initiatives to recruit foreign workers Bangladesh would be beneficiary

Reza Mahmud :
Malaysia has taken new initiatives to gear up foreign workers recruitment making ‘difficult’ system easy which may help Bangladesh to send huge workers there in short time.
Malaysian Minister of Home Affairs Saifuddin Nasution Ismail on Thursday said that his ministry will be the main custodian in the management of foreign workers in Malaysia from January 15.
However, Saifuddin Ismail sought to assure employers, industry players and migrant workers that they need not be fret over this change in policy as it has been taken to speed up the labour recruiting system from abroad. The decision of the Malaysian government come in the time when the Bangladeshi manpower recruitment agencies expressed frustrations about the difficult process of sending workers to the South-East Asian Developed country.
When contacted, Mohammad Abul Bashar, President of of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) told The New Nation on Friday, “Malaysian initiatives to ease the hard recruitment process is good news for Bangladeshi workers.”
He said if it execute soon huge manpower can go the country within short time.
When contacted, Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, Secretary General of BAIRA told The New Nation, “The Malaysian companies sent demands for more than two lakh workers, but only 32 thousands of workers were sent to the country so far. There are huge gap between the demand and supply.”
The BAIRA Secretary General said that they had submitted letter to the Expatriates’ Welfare Ministry asking to find and solve the problem remaining in the process.
When contacted, Mohammad Fakhrul Islam, Joint Secretary General-1 of BAIRA told The New Nation, “We have found out three main reasons responsible behind sending fewer workers to Malaysia. The one is the difficult online process to send manpower to the country.”
In the latest development, Malaysia is trying to ease the recruiting process as their Home Affair Minister Saifuddin Islamil said.
The minister said the human resources ministry’s role in labour policy, determining migrant worker quotas and finalising agreements with source countries will be “strengthened”.
“This realignment in functions will not affect the existing procedures and flow of applying to hire foreign workers, since the focus of this move is more on governance,” he said at a press conference.
Saifuddin also said both ministries have agreed to loosen the conditions and procedure of applications for foreign worker quotas to an “optimum” level.
He said this would include easing the evaluation of employers’ qualifications to hire foreign labour, the immigration process and security checks.
He also said Putrajaya wanted to reduce the time it took to bring in migrant workers in less than a month, by simplifying the processes involved.
“We have identified areas where the process can be simplified further,” he said.
Saifuddin Ismail said that the two ministries had also taken note of the economic affairs ministry’s projections on the extent of foreign labour needed in Malaysia.
“The government will ensure that the management of foreign workers in Malaysia is always based on the rule of law while protecting the rights of each migrant worker.”
The minister added that there were more than 1.4 million foreign workers on temporary work passes in the country most of them in the manufacturing sector, followed by construction and services.
In 2022, Putrajaya had approved 676,070 out of a total of 1,606,724 foreign worker quota applications.