Ahmad Zahid, who is also Home Minister, said the programme would initially be implemented for three months and was expected to benefit about two million workers without valid work permits.
The programme would safeguard these workers from being cheated by unscrupulous foreign worker agents who undertake such registration, he told reporters after addressing the monthly assembly at the Home Ministry here.
“Some employers who went through agents previously found that their workers were not registered after they had paid the fees.
“This (online programme) can also prevent cases of employers not paying the levy for their workers,” he said.
Ahmad Zahid said the programme would be continued if there was good response from employers and foreign workers without permits.
When announcing the recalibrated Budget 2016 on January 28, Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke of the Rehiring Programme, saying it was implemented to fulfil industry demand as well as enable the government to ascertain the number of foreign workers without permits in the country for the purpose of security monitoring.
Ahmad Zahid also said that the Home Ministry would meet employers after the Chinese New Year to discuss the implementation of the new rates of the foreign workers’ levy.
The government had taken note of employers’ complaints and criticism in this regard and would use the meeting to obtain feedback and fine-tune the implementation of the higher levy, he said.
Ahmad Zahid said Najib had contacted him on the matter while he (Ahmad Zahid) was in Beijing on a recent visit and wanted him to reconsider the rates of the levy as well as its period of implementation.
Najib had announced on January 28 that the government would streamline the management of the foreign workers’ system, whereby the levy would be clustered into two categories only — namely the sectors of manufacturing, construction and services; as well as the sectors of plantation and agriculture.
The new rates of the levy — RM2,500 in the manufacturing, construction and services sectors and RM1,500 in the plantation and agriculture sectors — came into effect on February 1.
The old rates were RM1,250 (RM1,010 in Sabah and Sarawak) in the manufacturing and construction sectors; RM1,850 (RM1,490) in the services sector; RM590 in the plantation sector and RM410 in the agriculture sector.
The levy for foreign domestic workers remains at RM410.
– BERNAMA