25/03/2011 (The Star) - A WORKFORCE of around 1.5 million is needed to support growth and development in Sarawak, said Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wira Abu Seman Yusop.

“The total number of local workers in Sarawak is less than 800,000 but the state needs a larger number following the government’s decision to open two million hectares of oil palm plantation,” he told Datuk Aaron Ago Dagang (BN-Kanowit) during question time.

He was asked to state the number of legal and illegal foreign workers in Sarawak and the reasons why locals were not interested in jobs currently held by foreigners.

Abu Seman said his ministry issued 131,381 temporary work permits in Sarawak in 2010 but was unable to produce the number of illegal workers.

“Illegal immigrant workers are hard to identify because there are many cases of overstaying as well as those who enter Sarawak illegally,” he said.

He added that last year, the ministry and other agencies conducted 273 operations against illegal immigrants in Sarawak.

He also said that local workers were not interested in certain jobs because of the nature of the jobs, the environment in which they have to work and the low pay.

Employers, he said, were forced to engage foreign workers, especially when the jobs were difficult, dirty or dangerous.

In a related development, Deputy Human Resources Minister Datuk Maznah Mazlan said locals were not sidelined in the process of hiring expatriates.

She said priority would also be given to qualified local candidates to fill certain jobs.

“Approval would only be given if the expatriate is holding a key position or is a major shareholder in the company,” she said in her reply to P. Kamalanathan (BN-Hulu Selangor).

She said the main reason in hiring expatriates was to attract foreign investments and to fulfil certain criteria in the workforce.

Maznah added that a minimum wage of RM5,000 for expatriates was implemented to ensure that local companies would not hire foreign talents when qualified local candidates were available.

“They would have to go through a vetting process by the Expatriate Committee and then their application would be evaluated by the Immigration Office,” she said.

She noted that until Jan 21, the number of expatriates in the country was 32,999, which was 0.3% of the total workforce in the country.