Santiago: Levy not a good idea
By CHRISTINA TAN
PETALING JAYA: Instead of imposing a levy on employers of foreign workers, Selangor can introduce a minimum wage as a way to reduce the use of foreign workers and encourage employers to hire locals.
Employers could transfer the burden of the levy to their foreign workers by deducting their already meagre salaries, said Klang MP Charles Santiago, an economist.
"However, a minimum wage for all (local and foreign workers) would allow fair job opportunity between the local and foreign workers and this is the only way to stop migrant workers into Malaysia.
"The state government has to decide on a minimum wage for workers in each sector – such as plantation, technical, services and factories – to stop companies from continuing to use foreign workers who are paid low salaries," he said in an interview.
He was commenting on Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim's proposal to collect RM9 monthly from employers of all migrant workers in the state to use as a fund to retrain unemployed youth.
He said the government could learn from the other countries about the employment of foreign workers, where employers must convince the government the use of foreign workers was necessary before they were allowed to hire them.
Santiago, who is also director of the non-governmental organisation Monitoring Sustainability of Globalisation, said many employers did not pay the salaries of their migrant workers. When workers run away, they become illegal and that led to problems.
He said Singapore had a large number of foreign workers but did not have problem of its own citizens not getting jobs.
"It is unfair to give reasons like local workers don't want to work in certain sectors and put the blame on migrant workers as the reason why Malaysians are not getting jobs."
On manpower training centres, he said the quality of training was poor and this led to complaints that local workers were not efficient.
The technical or vocational centres must also ensure that the number of people trained met private sector demands, he said.
"There is no point in producing 1,000 hair-stylists when only 500 are needed," he said.
http://thestar.com.my/news
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