While the World Bank has recorded that the Malaysian exports were US$140.9 billion, just 1.4 percent of the total world exports against a total import of US$157.75 billion, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$157.9 billion (GNP: US$124 billion) in 2005/7, it is very important to note that the Malaysian economy has been suffering from a deficit balance of payment for sometime.
In the wake this, the remittances of foreign workers to their own countries is causing us more economic problems than can ever be assumed. Bank Negara Malaysia had recorded a US$1.8 billion total outflows through banks and remittance service providers.
However alternative calculations based on a sampling undertaken by the Statistics Department include estimated outflows of US$5.7 billion in 2005. According to Bank Indonesia, the total remittances coming into Indonesia from Malaysia was over US$2.7 billion in 2006.
The total remittances going out of Malaysia is equivalent to a staggering seven percent of our GNP.
According to a Human Resources Ministry report, the total foreign workforce is about 11.3 million out of a total population of 26.75 million people. A Home Affairs Ministry report in 2006 shows that legal foreign workers in Malaysia are 1,850.063.
However, there are also present in the country additional undocumented (illegal) migrant workers of 1.2 million. Of these 63% are Indonesians, 11% are Nepalese, 7% are Indians, 6% are Burmese, 6% are Vietnamese and the rest make up another 7%.
Hence, there are a total number of 3,050,063 foreign workers in the country and they make up almost 30% of the total workforce of this nation and a staggering 8.1% of the total population of the country.
Malaysia has to compete very hard to attract foreign investment against an outdated and ineffective National Economic Policy. While doing so, it also has to compete with economically powerful neighbours like Singapore whose exports alone in 2005 was US$ 229.6 billion or 2.3% of the total world exports.
In the wake of this, more and more local and foreign companies based in Malaysia and shopping malls and supermarkets are hiring more and more migrant workers both legally and illegally. Their arguments for this is just cheap labour.
But are they cheap? A restaurant worker from India is earning RM1,200 in addition to all facilities given to him. How many of our own workers are earning that much and with such facilities? Do they realise that US$5.7 billion dollars sent as remittances annually from our country would eventually make the citizens of this country to fall into the hardcore poor category?
The deepening of the human resource crisis continues more and more foreign workers displacing our own workers in areas of work once destined very much for Malaysians. While foreign workers become more and more skillful in manufacturing and construction, our own workers will be devoid of such skills in the future.
We do still have a large population of the workforce who would like to be part of the dynamic manufacturing and plantation sectors. Why are we not looking at these people who would want to be based at the plantations instead of being locked in the urban poverty syndrome where they cannot manage themselves with their families?
In the Shah Alam industrial area, much of the production jobs have been taken over by migrant workers. Why have our local workers not taken to the jobs?
While in their own home countries, the foreign workers face considerably more lax labour and human rights laws, they find that our laws are more accommodative to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with NGOs and trade union centres willing to protect and represent them.
We are not against our NGOs or our trade unions providing them social and human rights assistance within the ambit of international law, but what we are worried about is the worsening of the crises. It is very evident that foreign workers are displacing our citizens’ right to work in many areas. This cannot be more serious than it is now.
While DiGi Telecommunications and Citibank have activated the DiGi Remit to facilitate the transfer of money from Malaysia to Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines via SMS, Sunil Balagopal of Western Union says Malaysia is one of their best business centres in this region.
They alone are contemplating providing a remittance service worth US$400 million away from Malaysia every year. Do we think this is good news for us?
