“They don’t like working in rural areas,” MEF executive director Shamsuddin Bardan told FMT in a comment on Deputy Federal Territories Minister Edmund Santhara’s recent proposal that the refugees be allowed to work in the plantation sector.

Shamsuddin said the trial programme involved 30 Rohingya refugees and five plantation companies in Pahang.

He said the idea was to equip them with working skills they could use once they were resettled in third countries.

He also spoke of a long-term programme to give the refugees permanent employment on plantations and farms with offers of free housing and low charges for electricity and water.

“But they were still not interested,” he said. “They prefer to live in cities and towns.

“But it could be done again. We can try to convince them that working on farms would give them a great number of skills and prepare them for settlement in third countries.”

In making his proposal, Santhara said plantations hiring Rohingya refugees could save on the cost of transporting foreign workers from their home countries.

Indonesians and Bangladeshis currently account for most of the foreigners working in the plantation sector.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that Rohingya make up half of the 175,000 refugees in Malaysia. An estimated 15,000 of them live in Selayang.

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