KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah government is clear about its policy not to bring in Bangladeshi workers, Datuk Siringan Gubat said.
The state Human Resource Development and Information Technology Minister said the Sabah government had already made it a policy three years ago not to bring in Bangladeshi workers.
“The policy still stands today,” he said in a statement responding to a viral social media posting which claimed that Sabah was allowing the entry of Bangladeshi workers.
He said that Sabah’s foreign labour policy on taking in only Indonesians and Filipinos remained.
The people, he said, should stop circulating fabricated reports and rumours on such serious matters just for political mileage.
In Kuching, Sarawak also made it clear that the state would not take in any of the 1.5 million Bangladeshis to work at its plantations.
Land Development Minister Tan Sri James Masing said Bangladeshi workers were unsuitable for plantation jobs as they did not have the necessary experience and skills.
“As far as the plantation sector is concerned, we will not bring them in. We’ve seen them work in plantations in peninsular Malaysia and we found them unsuitable,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state Labour Department said it would not process applications to recruit Bangladeshi workers.
Its director Datuk August Buma said this was because the state government had found them unsuitable and was not in favour of engaging them.
“We will only start processing such applications if the Government changes its policy on this issue,” he was reported as saying in a local daily.
He added that Bangladeshi workers could not enter Sarawak without the state’s consent as the state had control over immigration.
- See more at: http://www.mpoc.org.my/Sabah_sticks_to_its_policy_%e2%80%93_no_Bangladeshi_workers.aspx#sthash.IttUShYe.dpuf