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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will ban foreign workers at
all its airports in a bid to reduce migrant labor in the country,
according to a report Wednesday.
The move comes after calls by
unions to halt the hiring of foreign workers at airports, saying
they could pose a security threat.
“All airports, especially the
Kuala Lumpur International Airport [KLIA], shall only use local
manpower in jobs involving interfacing with tourists,” Deputy
Prime Minister Najib Razak told The New Straits Times newspaper.
Home Affairs Minister Radzi
Sheikh Ahmad said the ban was part of plans to cut the nation’s
reliance on foreign labor.
“This is… one of the steps
towards reducing our dependency on foreign workers,” he was quoted
as saying by the paper.
“We want workers that tourists
meet when they arrive, those pushing trolleys and taking their bags,
to be locals,” he added. “We even want those who clean toilets
to be locals.”
Malaysian Airlines Employee Union
President Alias Aziz said the vast majority of foreign workers at
KLIA, mostly from Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, did not have
proper security clearances.
“With Malaysians, we know who
they are because they have an identity card and we can carry out
background checks, but with foreigners who use other identification
it is very hard,” Alias told AFP.
“This means we can’t really
trust the foreign worker greeting passengers to be who they say they
are or even those working in sensitive parts of the airport,” he
added.
Malaysia is home to an estimated
2.6 million legal and illegal foreign workers who are mostly
employed in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors as well as in
domestic work.
--AFP
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