MP SPEAKS | Saravanan's failures laid bare in front of his ministry officers

Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng, Beruas MP Ngeh Khoo Ham and myself, met with Human Resources Minister M Saravanan at his ministry for a special briefing.

There I mentioned to the minister that it was shocking he would blame the Pakatan Harapan government for his failure to bring in the foreign workers demanded by the industry.

Since he keeps harping on the fact that Harapan imposed a moratorium on Bangladesh workers when we were in government, I reminded the minister that all 15 other source countries could still send their workers here.

In fact, the moratorium imposed was due to “systemic rot” set in while BN was in power which led to the country being involved in "forced labour". A moratorium was put in place to address this.

In fact, it was because of the moratorium the nation stayed at Tier 2 the US’ Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.

The ultimate failure of Saravanan is to lead the nation down to Tier 3, the lowest tier, which has led to many companies facing sanctions on their exports, causing these companies billions in revenue.

To make matters worse, the lack of foreign workers has resulted in even more losses, which the minister admitted to at this meeting.

After the backdoor government was formed, it imposed a general moratorium on all workers from all countries, for two years, on the pretext of Covid-19.

This catastrophic decision and the lack of foresight to resume hiring, have led to a massive shortage of workers and the mess we are now in.

So for Saravanan to blame Harapan is a cowardly move and does not hold water.

At the meeting, I also brought up the issue of introducing "Online Foreign Worker Application" to ease the process by which the ministry staff still need to meet employers face to face to verify their documents.

Yes, I do agree there are times when the employer doesn't know they have applied for workers, or when the employer applies for 10 but agents instead apply 20 for them and some with forged documents.

But because of a few bad apples, you inconvenience the rest of these employers?

The country talks about automation, digitisation and moving to 5G but when it comes to this, the old traditional system must apply.

Does it make sense that employers from Perlis and Johor must come all the way here to attend these interviews?

You can lodge reports on these bad apples and not punish all employers because of them.

Online is the way to go

I think the minister knows that we should do away with a system that allows employers to meet with public servants for this purpose as this allows for corruptive practices.

We have seen just how bad it was during BN's last reign.

To avoid this, online is the way to go and it surprises me that Saravanan and his team do not agree with this.

The minister is encouraging corruption by allowing this system to be used.

This is why I suggested the multi-tier system, which Saravanan refuses to reply to.

This system gives immediate and automatic approval for workers, without any physical meeting up and works very well in countries like Singapore.

This system was done by Harapan but its implementation has been dragging on by the present government.

I want to remind Saravanan that the BN government in 2008 had frozen the hiring of foreign workers in certain sectors like the textile, laundry, jewellery and second-hand dealers.

Yet this minister points to Muhyiddin's decision to continue similar sectors in 2019, which although I did not agree on, was decided by the cabinet and done.

He is trying to say I agreed to that, which I did not.

Why did Saravanan not object to BN's earlier decision to freeze these sectors?

Despite asking many times, details as to why the shortage still persists remain unanswered. We want these numbers by the sector.

I urge Saravanan to stop blaming everyone else but himself.

Face the facts and admit to his mistakes. Just give us the answers we are asking for and stop beating around the bush.

M KULASEGARAN is the MP for Ipoh Barat and a former human resources minister under Pakatan Harapan.

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