The federation’s president, Syed Hussain Husman, said the special quota system should be continued as a ready supply of workers would enable the private sector to fast track economic recovery.

“It is critical for us to put back our economic recovery efforts quickly on track, especially with the recent announcement by the International Monetary Fund that Vietnam had surpassed Malaysia to become the fourth largest economy in Southeast Asia,” he said in a statement today.

Syed Hussain said employers had exhausted all avenues to recruit manpower, adding that unemployment issues should not be brought into the mix when there was an urgent need to bring in more foreign workers.

“We must accept the reality that locals are not interested to fill up the vacancies and address the need to bring in foreign workers urgently for the sake of our economic recovery,” he said.

He added that if employers were no longer given foreign worker quotas to meet their operational needs, then they would not be able to meet their obligations towards their customers.

Syed Hussain also pointed out that the cancellation of the special quotas by the home ministry was not in line with the desire to improve the livelihoods of businesses and employees in general.

“It is important to understand that if employers suffer, the supply chain will also suffer. Locals will also suffer if the business closes down. We need foreign labour in the 4D (dirty, difficult, dangerous and demeaning) sectors,” he said.

He added that the move to involve the human resources ministry in approving the employment of foreign workers was welcomed in order to ensure uniformity of policies and procedures.