Allow S’wak, Sabah to employ foreign workers in eatery industry — Association chief

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SIBU: The government ought to allow eateries in East Malaysia to employ workers from Asian countries like Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh and China in order to resolve the prolonged problem of worker shortage in the two states.

In making the call, the president of The Pan Malaysia Koo Soo Restaurant and Chefs Association Kapitan Lim Vun Chan reasoned the youths in the states of Sarawak and Sabah have shown less or no interest in the employment opportunity provided in the industry.

“The associate members of our association had even set up stalls at ‘Youth Employment Expo’ organised by Sabah state government in January this year in an effort to recruit workers to fill over 100 job vacancies in various types of eateries, but the initiative had been met with failure as there were only several persons coming to make inquiries in the three days,” he said during the Chinese Education Fund-Raising Dinner organised by Sibu Division Chefs Association (SDCA) here on Saturday evening.

Owing to this reason, he stressed that the industry players in East Malaysia have to rely on foreign workers to help in their continuous push for the future development of the industry.

“We also noticed that the one-stop service centres set up by the government specifically to handle the foreign workers’ affairs after the foreign workers whitening 6P programme has not been able to speedily conduct verification on foreign workers’ job permit applications.”

According to him, the association is definitely acknowledging the 1Malaysia Concept mooted by Prime Minister Datuk Sri Najib Tun Razak, but until now there are still obvious differences between East Malaysia and Peninsula Malaysia especially in the food industry, where the issues of foreign workers shortage and minimum wage policy have created huge posers.

“We do not want to see two sets of policies under 1Malaysia Concept. In the matter of recruiting foreign workers, the two states should be accorded the similar rights with that of Peninsula Malaysia.”

Commenting on the minimum wage policy, Lim expressed the association’s hope that the government would not implement it hastily.

In contrast, the policy should be prudently and comprehensively scrutinised before being implemented in stages in accordance to regions especially
in the industry involving eateries.

“The goods in East Malaysia are more expensive than those in Peninsular Malaysia. The implementation of the policy will similarly not be able to resolve the problem of dearer goods in the sense that it will burden consumers even more,” Lim added.