[Mahathir menyeru majikan membuang pekerja asing terlebih dahulu jika keadaan syarikat tergugat. Soalnya banyak kilang atau syarikat teknologi di negara ini hampir tidak bergantung langsung kepada pekerja asing. Mereka lebih banyak digajikan di sektor lain yang memerlukan tenaga buruh yang amat murah yang tidak dapat diisi oleh rakyat tempatan kerana tidak mencukupi untuk menyara keluarga.

Motorola misalnya menggugurkan 1,500 pekerja di Kuala Lumpur dan Seagate pula sebanyak 6,000 kerana menutup dua kilang di Pulau Pinang dan Ipoh. Kesemuanya adalah pekerja tempatan!

Menurut Irene Fernandez, jika semua pekerja asing suruh keluar, ekonomi Malaysia lagi cepat runtuh. Masalahnya kerajaan terlalu beria-ria mengimpot pekerja luar sejak dulu lagi sehingga rakyat tempatan sudah malas atau tidak berminat untuk menggantikan tempat mereka kerana upah yang tidak setara dan terasa tidak mulia.

Kata-kata Mahathir itu memberikan mesej yang tidak menyenangkan para pekerja asing yang memang diperlukan di sini kerana kepakaran mereka. Malangnya tiada siapa menegurnya Putrajaya dibina oleh luar hampir kesemuanya dan mahligainya penuh dengan barangan impot sahaja. - Editor]

Asiaweek
Monday, April 2, 2001

(UN)Welcome To Malaysia

An economy under pressure targets foreigners By ARJUNA RANAWANA Kuala Lumpur

Haniff Bazar feels wronged. After seven years of toiling on a coconut plantation north of Kuala Lumpur for $3,000 a year, the 26-year-old Bangladeshi was laid off recently, six months before his officially stamped Malaysian work permit was to run out. The irony is that his replacement is likely to be an illegal immigrant. "We Bangladeshis are being asked to go back," he says, "and the local Malaysians do not want to do our work. The bosses are replacing us with illegals."

That's just one facet of Malaysia's foreign worker problem. A more troubling aspect for its economy is that at the same time Haniff faces forced deportation, other foreigners are being actively encouraged to immigrate to fill an acute skills shortage in the nation's key export industry, technology-related manufacturing. Heng Huck Lee, chief executive officer of Penang-based Globetronics, says Malaysia simply does not have workers with the skills his company needs: "[For one project] we found that there were no software engineers with the required expertise in Malaysia. So we recruited five people from India."

Haniff and Heng represent two extremes of a government employment policy that is increasingly missing the mark. The policy was first articulated in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis. It ordered both foreign-owned and domestic companies to favor native Malaysians by firing foreigners first and hiring them last. But as the nation's economy improved last year, the government backed away, and the number of new foreign workers permitted into Malaysia leapt to 230,608, three times the 1999 total.

In recent weeks, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed seems to have concluded he was too quick to retreat from the foreigners-first firing order. With the Malaysian economy increasingly under threat from a global slowdown in demand for the very manufactured technology exports that are a key part of Malaysia's economy, the policy has been reaffirmed. The Malaysian central bank cut its 2001 growth forecast last week from 7% to between 5% and 6%. Mahathir reminded employers March 20 of their obligation to lay off foreigners first should their firms get hit by the slowdown.

From the beginning the employment policy could be seen in the broad context of support for bumiputras (Malays and indigenous groups) in place since 1971. The reminder that employers should favor Malaysians was followed not long after by announcement of a $790 million economic stimulus package intended to make up some of the losses expected from reduced exports to the U.S. and Japan. And then this week, in a speech by Mahathir laying out a sweeping 10-year economic development plan, came a clear reaffirmation of support for increasing bumiputra ownership of the Malaysian economy.

It was all great rhetoric. and it will undoubtedly win votes. But will the measures help? The employment policy seems especially problematic. Malaysian trade union officials insist that many foreign workers - mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia - do hold coveted technology manufacturing jobs and therefore ought to be laid off before native Malaysians. But technology companies that have announced cuts recently say foreign workers play almost no role in their operations. U.S. disk-drive and computer peripherals maker Seagate Technology will close two plants this year employing 6,000 people, one near Penang and one in Ipoh, it says neither plant has any foreign workers to lay off. Estimates are that Motorola will lay off 1,500 people from its plant near Kuala Lumpur, and a spokeswoman for the company says the operation is run entirely by Malaysians.

While the foreigners-first layoff policy is unlikely to protect Malaysians in production jobs, there is little doubt that it will hurt documented foreigners at the low end of the nation's job spectrum. Will Malaysians step into the openings? Unlikely, says Irene Fernandez director of Tenaganita, a non-governmental organization that assists migrant laborers, especially women, in Asia. She says Malaysians want nothing to do with what she calls the three Ds of work done by foreigners: dirty, demeaning and dangerous. According to Fernandez, the employment policy makes no sense: "Let them send foreign workers out and see what happens. Our economy will collapse."

Trade union spokesman Nadesan Balakrishnan, says the fundamental problem is that cheap labor was invited into Malaysia when times were good, given jobs no one really wanted, and paid a paltry amount to do them. "Some interested groups brought in foreign workers so that they could get work done without paying proper wages," says Balakrishnan. "If Malaysians were employed from the beginning in the labor intensive work, we would not have this problem."

That is debatable. But targeting foreign workers now will not solve Malaysia's labor problems. Worse, it will send an unortunate message to the skilled foreigners the country needs: We want you - just don't get too comfortable.

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