Instead, it was the voices of certain quarters that had pushed the government into a tight corner and forced it to rush into announcing the plans that it had laid out strategically.

“We decided to postpone the intake of foreign workers to be in line with the rehiring programme which came into effect earlier this week.

“We were about to announce the freeze when the Opposition and the employers’ associations made a lot of noise and spun the whole issue out of context,” he told FMT.

Nur Jazlan pointed out that the rehiring programme was meant to “clean up” the illegal workers in Malaysia.

Hence, it only made sense that any intake be halted for the time being, he added.

The government had announced its plan to bring in 1.5 million workers from Bangladesh in stages over the next three years. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two countries was sealed yesterday.

After receiving massive criticism over the move, Human Resources Minister Richard Riot Jaem today clarified that the 1.5 million figure was actually the number of Bangladeshis who were registered by their government for employment in 139 countries, including Malaysia.

There was a state of confusion when later this afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced a freeze on all recruitment of foreign workers, including those from Bangladesh.

“We have negotiated the terms of the agreement for a very long time. Bangladesh offered us the 1.5 million workers, but we never agreed to take all of them.

“As Riot has confirmed, they were also meant for 139 other countries.

“The agreement is valid for three years.

“So even if we postpone the intake, it would not in any way affect the MoU we just signed.”