ANYTHING that's completely prohibited, heavily regulated and taxed, or simply frowned upon, can only mean one thing: a flourishing black market capitalising on desperate needs.
Clamouring for uncensored, reliable news, newspapers, magazines and books? Access to global online news portals, social media and digital publications is unfettered. Seeking uncensored movies, TV and radio shows? Streaming and podcast services and data transfer websites distribute practically every title in the known universe.
Booze and cigarettes eating into the meagre budget? Resourceful smugglers bring in the contraband and resell them at pre-tax rates. Can't afford authentic high fashion? High-quality knock-offs can glam you up at a fraction of the retail price. And then there's the ultimate black market: the exodus of migrant workers pivoting on cheap labour from underdeveloped and populous states. The cautionary tale? Indiscretion can get workers killed for too little compensation.
For eons, Western democracies, oil sheikhdoms and semi-developed nations like Malaysia have absorbed foreign workers, legally and illegally. Workers fortunate enough to earn decent wages religiously remit a major portion back home while others — their passports confiscated — are abused, cheated and discarded, vulnerable to the vagaries of the law.
Still, migrants gamble, seduced by promises of lucrative wages, that makes a difference between starvation and poverty, and survival and existence. It's a harrowing migration: many hired hands don't return home or return home in caskets. Then there's the unfortunate worker trapped in human trafficking.
Since Malaysia assumed the Asian Tiger mantle, foreign worker demand has been insatiable to ease menial labour gaps locals won't even sniff at. While corporations are generally conscientious, their reputations are bedraggled by reprobates who abuse workers, pervert wages, force bad hours, and lash out with physical and mental torture.
We raise these eternal woes because the Anwar administration just deployed the Relaxation of Foreign Workers Recruitment Plan — a 72-hour approval on employers' applications in seven sectors to hire foreign workers from 15 countries.
It's revolutionary: the hiring of labour for the so-called Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult sectors, circumventing pre-conditional hiring qualification and quota eligibility. We'd like to think that the programme also cuts down on exorbitant levies and the notorious "middlemen" scooping vulgar profits. In relaxing foreign recruitment, the government is giving in to the looming recession, reinforced by long-suffering industries lurching on low-level human resources.
But employers be warned: worker protection is now heightened, where a whiff of abuse can trigger a diplomatic nightmare. Scratches to our paroxysmal reputation might imperil hiring prospects. The programme is pragmatic: Malaysia's migrant worker paradise is being fiercely challenged by regional economic stars like Vietnam.
Besides, the prime minister assured his Indonesian counterpart during a recent visit that foreign employment safeguards and security are sacrosanct. Be mindful: a single case of maltreatment may yet sabotage this enlistment bonanza.