Policy chaos over migrant workers in Malaysia

Malaysia has a total of 1.9 million registered migrant workers. Despite this, the policies and laws regulating in-migration are chaotic, writes Evelyn Devadason on East Asia Forum. Malaysian government policies built on the concept of a short-term remedy for labour shortage problems have exposed the failure on the part of policymakers to recognise the critical contribution of migrant workers over the longer term. The problem is compounded by the absence of a comprehensive policy on in-migration as an integral part of national strategies for economic growth. The inflows of migrants in the various economic sectors have generally been governed informally, although the government has signed Memorandums of Understanding with several designated countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Pakistan and Thailand. Following this, the private sector was permitted to set up employment agencies to officially recruit migrant workers from these countries. However, after failing to combat the increasing inflows of illegal migrants, the government, in 1995, put a stop to private sector recruitment agencies and replaced them with a Task Force on Foreign Labour.