The Malaysian Insight

PUTRAJAYA needs correct policy sequencing to meet Pakatan Harapan’s aim of reducing the number of foreign workers and increasing the wages of locals, said senior DAP strategist Liew Chin Tong.

PH’s Budget 2020 had introduced incentives through a series of programmes aimed at replacing foreign workers with locals, rehiring women into the workforce and employing out-of-work graduates.

The ruling coalition’s shared prosperity economic agenda, meanwhile, aims to ensure low-income Malaysians can earn a decent living wage of RM5,800 by 2030.

Employers have often balked at hiring locals as they claimed Malaysians are choosy and demanded higher wages.

Liew, who is also deputy defence minister, proposed that policies to reduce foreign workers be first aimed at the services sector, followed by manufacturing, construction and agriculture.  

These policies should also move in tandem with incentives to get companies to automate their operations to cut down on the number of unskilled workers they need.

“We can reduce the number in the services sector. With manufacturing, we can reduce with incentives to get quicker adoption of automation,” Liew told The Malaysian Insight.

“After that, maybe construction, but this sector needs a longer transition period from using traditional methods to moving to the industrial building system,” said Liew, who heads DAP’s political education bureau.

“Lastly, it’s agriculture and plantations. There needs to be policy sequencing that is clear and which will help us. The policies are interrelated and follow a sequence and we need more discussion.”

Liew challenged the popular perception that Malaysians are unwilling to do dirty, dangerous and difficult – “3D” jobs – a reason employers often use to hire foreigners.

This perception contradicts with the reality that hundreds of thousands of Malaysians cross the Causeway daily to work in Singapore for low wages.

At the same time, thousands of Malaysians work illegally in farms in South Korea and Australia, while Malaysian plantations import the same type of workers from Indonesia and Bangladesh.

“The contradiction we have is that 500,000 Malaysians go to Singapore to work for wages not more than S$2,000. When they come back, this is converted to RM6,000.

“Many Malaysians work illegally in South Korea and Australia, there is something wrong. They are picking fruits. Something is very wrong, why are Malaysians picking fruits in Australia illegally?  

“We are hiring illegals and our own Malaysians are working as illegals. Something is very wrong here. This is the contradiction we have to solve with a forward-looking vision.”  

Liew said these same Malaysians who are crossing to Singapore are willing to work back home for RM3,000 to RM4,000 per month.

So, the challenge is to create semi-skilled jobs that pay these rates for Malaysians, which Liew believes can be done through more automation.

He drew on his experience as a student working in a restaurant to illustrate this.

“When I worked in Australia, each restaurant had a dish-washing machine. Not many here do because it’s easier to hire a dishwasher.

“But with the machine, even though it is expensive, it cuts down on staff and the savings can be used to pay the workers higher wages.

“We need to use technology. If a job requires 10 people then through automation and industrial revolution 4.0 we could reduce to two staff but each will be paid two to three times more. That should be the way.” – October 18, 2019.