Let Malaysians work abroad to help families and economy, govt told

PETALING JAYA: Economists have urged the government to refrain from limiting the opportunities for Malaysians to find well-paying jobs abroad.

They said Putrajaya should consider the benefits to these workers’ families as well as to the economy from the money they were sending home.

On Monday, deputy human resources minister Awang Hashim said Malaysia would not allow Malaysians to take part in the Asean farm worker visa scheme, which would allow those from the region to be sponsored to work in Australia’s agricultural sector.

Madeline Berma, an honorary professor at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, said this decision would have a negative effect on the local economy, given that Malaysians working overseas contributed considerably to the national income by sending large portions of their salaries to their families.

“For some families, especially in rural areas of Sarawak, income from family members working overseas can be substantial,” she told FMT. “These remittances contribute to the country’s GDP.”

She said Malaysians should have the freedom to choose where they wanted to work, especially if neither the pay nor opportunities available locally were sufficient.

Firdausi Suffian of UiTM Sabah agreed, saying the government, instead of stopping people from taking on low-skilled jobs elsewhere, must address the job market more widely to convince them it was worth staying in Malaysia.

“We have two problems, unemployment and underemployment,” he said. “You get degree and diploma holders taking jobs from unskilled workers because they cannot find jobs that suit their skill sets.

“I think there is an opportunity to rethink our attitude towards labour intensive jobs and stop associating them with low skilled workers.

“There are labour intensive jobs everywhere, but if you look at olive farms in Italy, for example, they have created high-skilled jobs in that industry by leveraging technology and food science.”

“Then the government can guarantee it will get money through taxes, and remittances will be spent by their families and put into circulation,” he said. — Free Malaysia Today