KUCHING, June 9: Slow approval process for foreign workers is a cause for serious concern for national economic recovery, says Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen.
According to Chong in a statement today, the government must take extraordinary action to address and speed up the approval process for foreign workers so that the country’s economy may recover in the soonest possible time.
Highlighting that he had raised the issue during National Recovery Council’s sub-committee meetings at the Ministry of Finance in Putrajaya today, Chong also revealed that according to a Ministry of Primary Industries report last year, the country lost an estimated RM10 billion in revenue because of the shortage of workers in oil palm plantations to harvest fruits.
“If we include all the other industries, the loss of revenue suffered by the country as a result of the lack of foreign workers will be many-fold.
“The figures shown by the Ministry of Human Resources was that as at February 2022, we only have half the number of foreign workers compared to the figure back in early 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic hit us, that is approximately 1 million foreign workers short,” he said.
So far, Chong claimed, despite much hue and cry from all sectors of the economy, the government is still unmoved about the situation and the processing for applications for foreign workers is done at snail pace.
He added the government must be made to realised that every day of delay would mean loss in revenue to the country to the tune of millions of ringgit.
“Unless the government addresses this worker shortage issue urgently, our country will lag behind the other countries in our economic recovery.
“As such, the National Recovery Council must put the Ministry of Human Resources and Immigration Department on the spot so as to expedite the resolution of this problem,” he said. — DayakDaily
