Is It Good to Raise Cost of Employing Foreign Workers?

Do you think is it good to raising the foreign worker levy in order to limit the amount of foreign workers in our country? Or do you think it’s better to implement a minimum wage for local workers in Malaysia. I think that we should not allow the higher cost of employing a maid affect our mindset but we should know what the current social problem is exactly.

Let’s us think about the past, we don’t need maids as much as today, this is because it’s possible to survive on the salary of just the man, the woman can look after the kids. Rental fees, monthly housing installment and food were cheap. Nowadays both parents have to work to pay the 30 years housing loan, so a maid is often a necessity.

Personally think that raising the foreign worker levy will not reduce Malaysia’s reliance on foreign worker, but will increase the financial burden on local workers as well. This is because the levy hike means will raise foreign worker productivity also and subsequently will create heavy competition among foreign workers + local workers.

The good point for foreign workers is they still can accept “More levy but less pay” if provided that it’s still way a lot better than whatever they can earn back home. Hiring cheap foreigners is the reason why our wages cannot rise. Companies claim they become uncompetitive if they raise wages. As a result our wages have stagnated for the several years.

Eventually, you will feel that there will have more and more Malaysians are leaving the country because they are just not paid enough for the type of work they are doing. These are all the social issue we might encounter, so what should we do right now?