PETALING JAYA: A former Court of Appeal judge wants to see the end of “special approvals” for the recruitment of foreign workers in light of a damaging parliamentary report which exposed faults in the system.
Hishamudin Yunus, who chaired the Independent Committee on Foreign Worker Management tasked at streamlining foreign worker policies, said Tuesday’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report which revealed, among others, the granting of a high number of “special approvals” by the home ministry, was proof that the foreign worker recruitment system has been abused.
“It is disquieting that in the course of the independent committee’s inquiry with stakeholders, there were allegations of unhealthy practices in respect of the special approvals. And now, recent media reports are stating the same,” he told FMT.
“These ‘special approvals’ should be investigated and any wrongdoing brought to court. There is an urgent need to consider whether such a scheme should be abolished.”
The PAC report stated that of the 928,825 approvals for foreign worker entries into the country from 2016 to 2018, a total of 512,315 (55%) were “special approvals” granted by the home minister at the time.
It also revealed that middlemen were involved in the intake of foreign workers, including those who were allowed in despite failing the Foreign Workers Medical Examination Monitoring Agency (Fomema) inspection.
Five of the 10 middlemen were identified as politicians.
“The recruitment of foreign workers should be based on our existing laws and only those registered under the Private Employment Agencies Act 2017 should be allowed to act as recruitment agents,” said Hishamudin, who is also a Suhakam commissioner.
Foreign workers are regularly forced to pay agents exorbitant recruitment fees to find jobs in sectors such as plantations, construction or domestic care in Malaysia, a debt they then work to pay off throughout the duration of their contracts.
Calling for transparency and clarity in the recruitment system, Hishamudin said all matters related to the employment of foreign workers should be handled and approved by the human resources ministry, and not the home minister.
Separately, former human resources minister M Kula Segaran said several issues outlined in the PAC report were “exhaustively discussed” in the Independent Committee on Foreign Worker Management’s report, which has not been made public.
The Cabinet-sanctioned committee headed by Hishamudin was set up in August 2018 and produced 40 recommendations in a report presented to the then prime minister on May 22, 2019. The report has since been classified under the Official Secrets Act.
“The report took six months to prepare and I agreed to make it public after it was presented to my ministry, but unfortunately, the (then) home minister didn’t agree,” Kula told FMT.
“It still puzzles me as to why the home ministry, in the first instance, had agreed to form the independent committee but then implement nothing.”
Meanwhile, an immigration lawyer who was a member of the committee said the contents of the PAC report were hardly ground-breaking.
Selvaraja Chinniah said the report clearly showed that the previous and current foreign worker recruitment systems were a “disaster”, and called for a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) to bring the middlemen to justice.