PETALING JAYA: Not all foreigners who come into the country on student visas end up working in low-paying jobs. Some of them turn out to be successful entrepreneurs, reported The Sun today.
Ameer (not his real name) came to Malaysia on a student visa 10 years ago. Instead of doing what he came here for, he assembled and transported furniture, and today, he owns four furniture shops.
He is also married to a local woman, a bank officer, and lives a life of luxury with cars and properties. Most of the employees in his shops are also foreigners who came here on student visas.
Another foreigner, Assad, runs a cleaning business by day, and moonlights as a waiter by night. He employs more than a dozen Indonesian women in his shop, and some of them do not have work permits.
Like Ameer, Assad also came to the country on a student visa many years ago, and today, he also functions as an agent for foreign workers, according to The Sun report.
Assad runs his business under the name of a local man, to whom he pays RM200 monthly.
This is The Sun’s second follow-up to its expose on Bangladeshis and Nepalis flooding the country’s labour market using student visas, despite the current freeze on the hiring of foreign workers.
Some of these foreigners, who do not complain despite earning meagre (by local standards) sums of money working long hours daily, are entrusted by their employers to fully run the operations of pubs, bars and restaurants, said the report.
Most of these men also call themselves “students”, but would have hardly attended any lectures.
The daily also reported that foreign students without basic knowledge of English were being accepted into institutions of higher learning.
These men carry documents certifying their proficiency in the language, but in reality, they can’t even tick the right boxes in their medical history forms during check-ups.
This results in high drop-out rates, after which these students “disappear” into the local labour market.
According to the Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA) Chief Executive Officer Rujhan Mustafa, they are aware of such practises, but are unable to rectify the situation.
“Our job is to set the standards. It is up to the colleges to only accept students who meet such standards.”
The English language requirements for foreign students are a minimum score of 5.0 for the International English Language Testing System and Test of English as a Foreign Language, said the report.
Also acceptable are equivalent qualifications such as Cambridge English.
Native speakers from countries where English is the first language and those graduating from institutes which use English as the medium of instruction are exempted from such requirements.