Crackdown on foreign hawkers will not resolve labour shortage
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A RECENT move to tighten enforcement of immigration policies for foreign workers will prove ineffective in addressing the underlying problem of labour shortage, which the immigrant communities are happy to fill.
As part of efforts to crackdown on foreign ownership of businesses, Immigration Department director-general Mustafar Ali had in March instructed local authorities to revoke the licences of such shops and businesses.
For Kuala Lumpur City Hall, business licences issued in February this year include conditions that businesses must register the number of foreign workers, which cannot exceed 50% of total labour force.
These measures, alongside frequent raids on business premises, may serve to scare the foreigners, but would not address the labour shortages for 3D jobs, meaning work that is dangerous, dirty and difficult.
Two Chinese fruit and vegetable stall owners in Kuala Lumpur’s Chow Kit market said the authorities’ crackdown did not solve the fact that getting rid of foreign workers would only create a vacuum in their place.
Vegetable hawker Chong Kwan Hui, 49, said only about one-third of Chow Kit market’s 100-odd stalls are run by locals. The others are run by foreigners.
“Many of them lease their stalls to foreign hawkers, so they’ll at least be able to have some income from rent after they’ve retired,” he said.
Chong is in the same predicament, saying he, too, will consider leasing his stall to foreigners, even if it’s illegal to do so, as he is finding it more and more difficult to work from dawn till dusk as his age catches up.
Chong said the foreigners simply go into hiding for a while after authorities carry out their raids, before coming back to work again.
Chan, a 33-year-old banana seller, said the crackdown against foreigners does little to address the issue of labour shortage.
He also shot a question back at the writer, asking “It’s not like young people like you (who have received higher education) want our jobs, are you even willing?”
The two hawkers both agree that the opening of stalls by foreigners does not affect local businesses, as both cater to different markets.
“We have our local customers, they have their foreign customers, even the vegetables we sell are different. Foreign labourers love going to the stalls of their own countrymen, because they can only find the vegetables they want to eat there,” Chong said.
For the past 10 years, many of the hawkers in Chow Kit market were ethnic Chinese followed by Bangladeshi Muslims.
About 5km away from Chow Kit marketn where the Sentul mini Urban Transformation Centre (UTC) is located, a number of hawker centres and markets in the building are almost completely owned by foreigners.
Leong, a local vegetable hawker, told The Malaysian Insight that among about 20 stalls there, several of them have been completely taken over by foreigners. He blames it on the local owners, who were looking to make a quick buck.
“Some of these owners leased their stalls to foreign workers, or they allow them too much leeway to run the business while they themselves open another stall, earning a tidy sum in the process.
“To my understanding, they only need to pay these foreigners about RM20 to RM30,” he said.
Leong said this can lead to comical scenes where the foreign “owner” will run out to fetch the local “owner” to watch the stall whenever enforcement authorities come knocking.
60-year-old Aishah, who runs a grocery store at the same level as Leong, said there were at least 30 foreigners operating there.
“They are spread out on the lower market and on the food court on the first floor, it is very common to see foreigners manning the stalls when the boss is out,” she said.
All the small business owners agreed that until authorities resolve the issue of labour shortage, the problem of foreign ownership of businesses will not simply go away with an immigration crackdown. – October 7, 2018.