Reducing number of foreign workers

The Government hopes to reduce the number of foreign workers in the country to 1.8 million by the year 2010.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar told Datuk Mohd Nasir Ibrahim Fikri (BN-Kuala Nerus) that as at December 2008, there were some 2.06 million foreign workers.
“We have managed to reduce the number of foreign workers by some 60,000 since last March. With the freezing of foreign workers’ intake in certain sectors such as manufacturing and services, in addition to the current economic climate, we hope to further bring down the number,” he said.
Syed Hamid said the Government had been implementing measures to reduce the dependency on foreign workers since 2007.
“We have frozen the intake of Bangladeshi workers, made stricter criteria for approval of work permits and carried out regular joint operations with the Immigration and the Manpower Departments to achieve this,” he said.