Financial Times

KUALA LUMPUR, (Bernama) – The absorption of foreign workers into the labour force and economic system of a host country calls for the assumption of certain special responsibilities by the foreign labour importing nation, the Sultan of Perak, Sultan Azlan Muhibbuddin Shah said last week.

"It calls for the adoption of suitable laws to cater for the minimum labour rights of foreign workers. Alternatively it (the host nation) must provide for the extension of existing laws applicable to domestic workers to the foreign workers as well, insofar as the circumstances may permit," he said.

Sultan Azlan Shah, who was a former Chief Justice of Malaya, said this when opening the three day Law Association for Asia and the Pacific (Lawasia) Labour Law conference themed the Mobility of Labour in the Lawasia Region – The Legal and Social Problems of Migrant Labour.

Lawasia is a professional association of representatives of bar councils, law associations, individual lawyers, law firms and cooperation from the Asia Pacific region.

The members of Lawasia are Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Samoa, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Sultan Azlan Shah said a foreign labour recipient country was obliged to adopt an enlightened and egalitarian policy towards its foreign labour.

"Within the bounds of realism, it calls for a non-discriminatory approach. It should aspire toward a policy of an equality of terms and conditions of employment for both the foreign and local worker, working at the same level and at the same post.

"The host country should ever be vigilant against the exploitation of foreign labour. Foreign labour should not become an euphemism for some type of modernised bonded labour akin to compulsive labour," he added.

Presently, there are 1.8 million foreign workers in Malaysia with Indonesian accounting for 1.1 million followed by labour from Nepal, India, Myanmar, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

The manufacturing sector has the highest concentration of foreign labour with 614,245 workers followed by agriculture (372,007 workers), domestic helpers (317, 391), construction (278,102) and services (159,977).

The Sultan said these figures did not include the upper bracket expatriate staff engaged by local companies and banks for their special skills and expertise.

"The second feature is that official statistics on foreign labour would not include the undocumented foreign worker. Such workers fall under a different category altogether for statistical purposes," he said.

Sultan Azlan Shah, who had also served as the Lord President of the then Federal Court, pointed out that the mass movement of labour and the opportunities to work in a foreign country spawned two distinct problems, namely the illegal workers and the unscrupulous labour contractors who organised the illegal importation of foreign labour and the employers who employed them to cut cost.

He said while illegal labour threatened the social and economic fabric of society, it fell outside the umbrella of the protection and safeguards offered by labour and health legislation.

"It would be a mistake, however, to treat the illegal or undocumented worker as just an immigration problem. The greater wrong is done by the domestic establishments that employ them as a source of cheap labour and therefore place them outside the purview of the law," Sultan Azlan Shah said.

He said the solution to the problem had to be attended to at both ends, where the labour exporting country had a system that enabled undocumented workers to leave its shores and the recipient nation that unwittingly allowed these illegal workers to enterits borders to work.

He also pointed out that the repatriation of illegal or undocumented foreign workers had to be handled humanely with due regard to civilised standards of treatment.

He said it was important that a viable system be put in place to regulate the flow of foreign labour across borders and to ensure the documentation of every worker.

"Secondly, at the threshold stage is the overriding question of the health of imported worker. It is a concern that should preoccupy the attention of the authorities at both the departure and entry points. In the main is the concern over the spread and transmission of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and the like," he added.