Education sector should be highly skilled technologically to reduce dependent on foreign labour
By Abdul Ghani Nasir
Bangi , 18 June – Malaysia’s education sector needs to be highly skilled technologically in order to lessen our dependent on foreign labour.
This will allow the country to stay strong economically said the Deputy Director General of Higher Education, Ministry of Higher Learning , Professor Dr Rujhan Mustafa.
However as long as there is a shortage of skill labour in any given area would lead to us to continue to rely on foreign labour, thus leading to an influx of migrant labour both legally and illegally.
“Even if strict procedure and rules of immigration is enforce, the industries need this cheap labour,” said Dr Rujhan when officiating the seminar on Migration, Social Justice and Challenges of Development: Legal Transformation and Dispute Resolution Mechanism in the Foreign Labour Sector, here yesterday.
The seminar was organised by Migration Research Collaboration Group & Mainstream Researh, UKM law faculty which was attended by 100 participant.
As a developed country in this region, he said Malaysia is the largest importer of foreign labour with Indonesian as the largest supplier.
Yet, the initiative to bring them in legally still failed to stop the flow of migrant illegally.
The falsification of documents , personal details ,work permits is rampant among the Indonesian labour.
Dr Rujhan hoped the sender country understand the problem of exploitation of immigrant workers while in Malaysia.
Society and employers are feeling the impact when the foreign workers flaunt the rules. The Migration Research Collaboration Group was formed as a joint effort between UKM’s Law Faculty and its counterpart at Universitas Indonesia middle of last year.