By TK Chua

Policymakers and employers have largely missed the forest for the trees when debating the issue of foreign workers in the country.

First, it is not for employers alone to decide on the optimal number of foreign workers needed in the country. To ask them to decide is akin to asking employers whether they would like to have more investment incentives. To me, policymakers and economic planners should rightly play their respective roles in this matter.

It is a fact that the “benefits” of foreign workers are lopsidedly distributed among stakeholders in the country. Employers and some government officials have gained enormously at the expense of workers and the country’s productivity drive.

Second, 3D (dirty, difficult and dangerous) jobs are essentially a chicken and egg argument. If our economy has grown by leaps and bounds, why is it that so many of our jobs are still in the 3D category?

Yes, in the short term, maybe we need foreign workers to carry out the 3D jobs. But has it ever occurred to us that foreign workers have in fact kept our production function rudimentary for decades?

Employers do not see the need to innovate, mechanise or automate. So we go about harvesting, collecting and transporting palm oil the same primitive way as we have done in the last thirty to forty years. If we do things the primitive way, of course we cannot expect higher productivity and higher wages to follow.

We keep arguing about the middle-income trap but we have largely and hypocritically ignored why many Malaysians are caught in the low productivity and low income conundrum. There is no way Malaysians could ever compete with foreign workers on the same productivity and wage paradigms. If we don’t understand this, we can’t move forward, as simple as that.

Third, we Malaysians must ask ourselves what our long-term development objectives are. Do we want an economy driven by innovation and technology or do we want an economy that gravitates towards that of a typical third world country characterised by low productivity, as well as input-driven and primitive technology?

Someone argued that no Malaysian would ever want to work in the plantation or construction sectors. Sure, this is a no-brainer. Foreigners are cheap, both in terms of wages and their lives. No employer would ever see the need to improve anything. If five workers drop dead today due to dangerous and hazardous working conditions, there will be another 10 waiting in line to replace them the very next day. Hence as Malaysia becomes more developed, these two sectors have become even more backward.

Foreign workers are no longer here in Malaysia to complement and supplement our needs. They are now here dictating our production function and even our way of life.

Fourth, issues relating to foreign workers require long-term policies and strategies. We need to phase them in when we need them and phase them out when necessary in line with our long-term economic objectives.

Foreign workers should be allowed to come in to supplement our labour needs . But they should not be here to impede us from doing what we are supposed to do i.e. moving up the value chain through innovation, technology, automation and mechanisation.

We should look at issues on foreign workers holistically. Yes, they help employers make more money in the immediate term, but they also deprive Malaysian workers and hinder us from moving up the development ladder in the long run. We must strike a balance by controlling the number of foreign workers to incentivise employers to move up the value chain.

TK Chua is an FMT reader.

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