PHOTO: Reuters/Kamarulzaman Russali

Malaysia’s Home Ministry has initiated a Labour Recalibration Program where employers are allowed to legalize undocumented foreign workers by Dec. 31 this year. This involves employers in all sectors except those that are frozen.

The ministry stated that the Recalibration Plan is a chance for employers who are hiring illegal foreign workers to come forward and register with the program to ensure that all individuals in the country are legal and documented.

Initially the Labour Recalibration program was for employers in the construction, manufacturing, plantation and agriculture sectors to legally employ undocumented foreign workers.

But this was later extended to employers in the sub-sectors of the service industry which includes restaurants, cargo, wholesale and retail and cleaning services.

Only several sub sectors such as laundry, welfare homes, textile, goldsmiths, hairdressing and used items remain frozen as the ministry has prohibited the hiring of foreign workers under these categories.

So far a total of 212,926 undocumented migrants have registered to be regularized as legal workers under the program.

-THE MALAYSIA VOICE