KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 ― Some sectors exempted from the moratorium on foreign recruitment have excess workers, a DAP lawmaker asserted after Putrajaya cited labour shortages.

Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim said there were shortfalls for the manufacturing and agriculture industries, but not in the construction and services sectors also exempted.

He said previous parliamentary replies showed the construction industry had an excess of 12,480 workers while the services sector had nearly 20,000. Sim pointed out the data also did not account for undocumented foreign workers who were already working in Malaysia.

“What is happening to them since many of them are already integrated into the job market?

“This means, instead of shortages, we may already have big surpluses of migrant workers and many of them are working below the radar of the law which may lead to the lack of protection for both the employers and employees,” he said.

On aggregate, there is a shortfall of 3,889 workers.

According to data from the Human Resources Ministry, which Sim included in his report, demand for migrant workers in the agriculture and construction sectors are expected to decline come 2020 while demand in the manufacturing and services industries are expected to increase.

The data showed that demand for foreign labour in the agriculture and construction sectors are projected to decline by 26,000 and 13,000 respectively from 2015 to 2020 however the manufacturing and services sectors are expected to see an increase in demand by 52,000 and 24,000 respectively in that same period.

This is on top of declining gross domestic product (GDP) growth across all four sectors from 2014 to 2016, his report said citing data from the Treasury’s website.

Sim said the conflict between available data and Putrajaya’s policies demonstrated a lack of coordination, and pointed out that two different ministries were involved in recruiting foreign manpower.

“The two different ministries handling migrant workers seem to have conflicting interest. The Human Resources Ministry has a certain projection for the number of migrant workers we need, but the Home Ministry is more eager to bring in as many migrant workers as possible given that this is the ministry which controls permit issuance and therefore drives the migrant workers industrial complex,” he said.

Putrajaya yesterday announced the four sectors will be exempted from the moratorium announced in February by Deputy Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi following uproar over a plan to bring in up to 1.5 million Bangladeshis.

Local industries previously said the freeze had hurt their operations, with up to 80 per cent saying they were affected.

The government is prioritising the rehiring of illegal foreign workers already in the country during the freeze, but only 55,000 out of estimated 1.4 million such illegals have been rehired to date.