AS U.S. DOWNGRADE LOOMS, MAHATHIR SIGNALS ‘PROPER POLICY’ ON FOREIGN WORKERS: NO MORE ‘DUBIOUS’ DEALS FOR BIG BROKERS INCLUDING ZAHID’S ‘1.5 MILLION BANGLADESHI WORKERS’ BROTHER?
KUALA LUMPUR – Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today said that the government is eyeing to put in place a proper policy for foreign workers.
This, the prime minister said, would help address questionable manners with which they were being brought into the country.
“Actually we’re studying to try and find a proper policy for foreign workers…they are many wrong things being done (with regards to their recruitment),” he said at the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce luncheon here today.
Dr Mahathir cited the example of a company being given the rights to bring in foreign workers without undergoing a proper tender process, and making a lot of money along the way.
The Prime Minister, who came to power in May after leading his Pakatan Harapan coalition to a stunning general election victory, also noted that Malaysia was expecting a lot of visitors, “some legal, some illegal, some temporary and some permanent.”
“All this will have to be looked into,” he told his audience.
He also said Malaysia was expected to welcome a huge number of tourists, for example from China, and the matter of issuing visas to them would need to be resolved as well.
Dr Mahathir pointed out that it was not always easy to ensure that people came to Malaysia legally, with the country having five nations as close neighbours and what he described as “very porous borders.”
“All these things are being studied and we would welcome any suggestion from the private sector,” he said.
On another matter, Dr Mahathir said the government welcomed foreigners with skills in new technology and information technology (IT) to come and live in this country.
“If the foreigners come with certain skills that we want, we would invite them to stay in this country and even become citizens if they want to.
“We would like to have more people with the brains to come and live in Malaysia and contribute towards industrialisation programmes,” he said. –BERNAMA
Source: US to downgrade Malaysia in annual human trafficking report
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KUALA LUMPUR – The US State Department will downgrade Malaysia in its annual report on human trafficking to be released later today, a source told Reuters, just a year after the South-east Asian nation was upgraded for making progress.
Malaysia will be downgraded back to Tier 2 Watch List, a category denoting nations that deserve special scrutiny, in the State Department’s closely watched Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, the source said, declining to be identified as the report is not yet public.
The source said while Malaysia had made good progress on combating human trafficking, it had not been able to meet all its promises. The source did not provide details.
Malaysia’s Home Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
The US embassy in Kuala Lumpur directed queries to the State Department, which said the TIP report would be released at 2pm ET (1800 GMT) today.
Last year, Malaysia was upgraded to Tier 2, a list of nations making significant efforts to comply.
The government had demonstrated increased efforts by expanding trafficking investigations, prosecutions, and convictions, the State Department said then.
However, it had said Malaysia did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas, including victim protection.
It had also said complicity among law enforcement officials, in the form of accepting bribes to allow undocumented border crossings, hampered some anti-trafficking efforts. Culpable officials typically avoided punishment, the report said.
Malaysia has long been known as a destination for trafficking victims, including documented and undocumented workers.
It relies heavily on foreign workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines, among others. It has nearly two million registered migrant workers, but there are millions more in the country without work permits.
Malaysia was in Tier 3 — the lowest ranking in the TIP report — until 2015, when it was upgraded to the Tier 2 Watch List, a move that drew criticism in both Malaysia and the United States.
Several US lawmakers had then questioned if the Obama administration move to upgrade Malaysia was politically motivated in an effort to get Kuala Lumpur to sign the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. Countries with the lowest human trafficking rating could not join the trade pact – from which the United States has now withdrawn.
The upgrade came just weeks after Malaysian authorities found 139 graves in abandoned trafficking camps near the Thai border in the northern state of Perlis. The victims were believed to be mostly Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar.
Human rights activists have criticised Malaysia’s actions over that case as inadequate. It charged four foreigners with human trafficking, but said it lacked evidence to charge Malaysian police officials who were suspected of being involved in the trafficking syndicate. — Reuters
BERNAMA / REUTERS
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