Upset over the rapidly rising cases of Indian workers being duped by job agents, Malaysia Wednesday said a government body will now be the sole agency to recruit workers from India, doing away with middlemen and agents.
"I was very, very sad to see poor Indian workers paying more than a lakh of rupees to agents who bring them to Malaysia and then disappear, sometimes even with the workers' passports leaving them stranded with nowhere to go," Works Minister Samy Vellu told PTI.
This, he said, had forced him to decide on forming a sole agency to recruit workers to safeguard the safety and well-being of Indian workers.
The Construction Labour Exchange Centre Berhad, a subsidiary of the Construction Industry Development Board, has been mandated by the government to be the sole agency to recruit workers from India for all sectors in the country.
The CLEC will open offices in Chennai and another at either Mumbai or New Delhi to facilitate the recruitment of Indian workers, he said. The CIDB is involved in several projects in India.
The minister expects the new agency to be operational soon.
The decision comes close on the heels of the detention of 60 Indian workers by immigration department workers who picked up the men from outside the Indian High Commission building here where they had been camping for some days.
Most workers claimed the agents had cheated them by promising jobs which did not materialise on their arrival.
The foreign workers from India will soon have to go through the Construction Labour Exchange Centre Bhd to enter and work in the country, Samy Vellu said.
He said the cabinet committee on foreign workers, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, had decided on March 16 that all workers from India must enter the country through CLEC.
Samy Vellu said workers from India in all sectors must go through the CLEC even if they were not involved in the construction industry.
"The local employers can apply to us and let us know their requirements about workers they need and we will advertise in India and recruit workers for them," he said.
"I was passing by the Indian High Commission a few days ago and saw some workers huddled on the pavement. I asked a friend to give them shelter till they could return to India," he added.
"We want to address this problem. The CIDB will work with the Human Resources Ministry and the Immigration to get the new intake system off the ground," he said.
The new agency would serve as the first agent for the workers, he said, adding that all workers from India must be registered with the body. A nominal fee would be charged for each registration.
Asked why Malaysia had not signed an MOU with India on labour, the minister said "An MOU has been prepared. There was some misunderstandings on some issues which will be overcome," adding New Delhi had wanted a minimum wage to be fixed but Malaysia did not have a fixed minimum wage.
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