The impact of the shortage of construction workers can be seen with several construction projects being delayed in their completion, including the Pan Borneo Highway project.

“The palm oil price is good now and the industry players are willing to pay extra to hire workers and the construction sector is one of the victims of this practice.

“The construction sector makes payments to workers based on market value and the skill level of the workers,” he told reporters after participating in the Jelajah FTRoadpedia Sarawak programme at the Selangau flyover here today.

Organised by the works ministry, the Jelajah FTRoadpedia Sarawak kicked off yesterday and finishes on June 11. It aims to monitor the current development of the Sarawak Pan Borneo Highway in the Kuching, Bintulu, Sibu and Miri districts.

Fadillah said enticing workers from one sector to work in another was not only occurring in Sarawak but nationwide.

“Some companies use head-hunters to recruit workers. The various industries must find ways to offer better benefits to retain their workers.”

Yesterday, Fadillah said when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, many workers involved in the Sarawak Pan Borneo project had returned to their countries of origin.

This resulted in contractors for the highway project now working with only 70% of the workforce they had before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Fadillah said the government had approved 14,000 applications to recruit migrant construction workers but the response from the foreign workers themselves had been quite slow.

He said the human resources ministry had signed agreements with Bangladesh and Indonesia to bring in their citizens to work in Malaysia.

However, Fadillah said the government was still waiting for the job offers to be taken up.

“The challenge now is to get workers for the construction sector.”

He said there were a lot of development projects in the pipeline in Indonesia itself and this may have an effect on the recruitment of workers in Malaysia.