In making this call, economist Firdaos Rosli said Malaysia would find itself in a very difficult situation if immigration and labour policies were not aligned to comply with TPPA requirements.
He was commenting on a report quoting Human Resources Minister Richard Riot as saying that businesses and agencies were working hand in hand to bring in undocumented migrants to work in the country.
Firdaos, a Fellow in Economics of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, said when Malaysia signed the TPPA, the government wanted to convert ideas into action by honouring existing long-term plans to conform to high labour standards.
He said at present, there was a big disconnect between the various ministries and businesses, leading to a situation where all parties involved could manipulate the system and where clear direction was lacking.
“We need to merge immigration and labour policies to guide us to conform with TPPA requirements.
“Such a process should have started decades ago as we cannot go from zero-to-100 overnight,” he said, adding the relevant stakeholders needed time to adjust.
Higher labour standards, he said, meant businesses would not be able to continue with current practices by suppressing business costs and rights of workers.
“Finger pointing is not going to get us anywhere. We need the political will to start getting the various stakeholders to discuss how we can move forward.”
He added that the country’s persistent need for an uninterrupted supply of low-skilled foreign labour had been around for decades.
Firdaos also questioned why domestic industries insisted on competing in labour-intensive exports when no country in the world today enjoyed low-cost structure and large-volume production capacity like China.
He added that if Malaysia did not prepare for change and was still over-reliant on low-skilled foreign labour when the TPPA came into effect, there may be social, economic and even security implications.
Yesterday, Riot, in his response to a question from Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi (Temerloh-PAS) in the Dewan Rakyat, said it was estimated that for every 10 legal foreign workers in Malaysia, there are seven undocumented foreign workers.
He added that the government would continue to give priority to locals to work in various fields and that Malaysia did not want foreign workers to take over jobs that could be filled by local workers.
The recruitment of foreign workers is open to five sectors which are considered less attractive to local workers — namely construction, agriculture, forestry, manufacturing and services.