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KUALA LUMPUR – National Recovery Council (NRC) chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin today urged the government to speed up its approval of permits for migrant workers entering Malaysia.
Muhyiddin said that since the government opened applications for the hiring of migrant workers in February this year, only 163 out of the 4,561 applications have been marked as “under consideration”.
“Although we’ve reopened the economy, a primary challenge is insufficient workers to keep the industries running smoothly,” he said in a news conference broadcast live on the Astro Awani news channel.
Muhyiddin said the nation’s labour shortage was “desperate” and that the NRC recommended for conditional approval to be granted to current applicants, allowing them to bring in 50% of the number of workers they have applied for.
The former prime minister said that the council also called for a long-term solution to the nation’s reliance on migrant workers by addressing “structural issues”.
In March, Malaysia and Indonesia inked a memorandum of understanding to improve the treatment of domestic migrant workers following several cases of abuse faced by Indonesian domestic workers.
Today's press conference follows a meeting of the NRC that discussed issues such as the use of MySejahtera as a tool for contact tracing, targeted government assistance for small-medium enterprises, and students facing hardships as a result of the pandemic. – The Vibes, April 14, 2022