KUALA LUMPUR: The government aims to resolve the foreign labour shortage within three months but employers are unconvinced that the issue could be completely sorted.
This, they said, was because of the lengthy documentation process which involves source countries as well.
Association of Employment Agencies Malaysia vice-president Suresh Tan said though the approval process has been sped up, the whole recruitment process still may take more than a month.
"The delay is still with the whole recruitment process because it also involves the process in source countries, their governments and their embassies so that will take more than one month," he said.
Tan said after employers receive the approval from the Human Resources Ministry, they still need to submit documentations to the source country's embassy in Malaysia, wait for its verification and then only it could be advertised by foreign agents in the source country.
In 2022, Malaysia approved only 676,070 applications out of the 1.6 million received.
Last month, Malaysia had waived industry quotas to speed up the hiring of foreign workers as the nation seeks to ease labour shortages across key industries.
Employers no longer have to comply with quota limits before hiring workers from 15 source countries — Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, India, Indonesia.
The plan, which started on Jan 17, will be implemented until March 31.
On Dec 20 last year, it was reported that the acute labour shortages impacting the domestic palm oil sector would not be fully resolved this year, despite industry players and government agencies shifting their attention to other countries for labour resources.
At the time, Malaysia Palm Oil Board (MPOB) director-general Datuk Dr Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir had said the situation would likely improve next year as the board and the government were already looking beyond Indonesia for labour, namely India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
On Dec 22, the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) reiterated its call for the government to delay enforcement of the Employment Act 1955 amendments slated for Jan 1.
It had said there were too many changes taking place affecting businesses during such challenging times, namely the floods and Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, MEF president Datuk Dr Syed Hussain Syed Husman pleaded with the government to permit the hiring of refugees to fill manpower shortages, citing delays in foreign workers recruitment, uninterested locals and vocational graduates who didn't fulfil the needs of the business as the grounds.
He said employers currently are still waiting for the arrival of new foreign workers despite efforts to simplify the procedure.
Business recovery efforts, he added, would be negatively impacted when employers cannot recruit workers with the right skills.
"Allowing refugees to work in sectors shunned by locals is much cheaper as their employment will not attract travelling costs as they are already in the country and once employed, they will formally be required to pay the necessary taxes to the authority," he said.
Syed Hussain said the reopening of all economic sectors caused Malaysia to face a shortage of manpower, particularly skilled workers, across all industries.
"Some of the employees that lost their jobs during the pandemic joined the gig economy and did not want to return as formal workers since they already had a taste of being their own boss," he added.
In the Dewan Rakyat earlier, Human Resources Minister V. Sivakumar had said the government aims to resolve the foreign labour shortage within three months through the Foreign Worker Recruitment Relaxation Plan.
He said said the plan would expedite the approval process for foreign labour quota, including the employment approval.