Restaurant Labour Shortage To Be Settled By Next Week Says Saravanan

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The freeze on the intake of migrant workers during the Covid-19 pandemic saw the restaurant sector faced with a labour crunch. (Bernama pic)KUALA LUMPUR: Human resources minister M Saravanan says the labour shortage in the restaurant sector will be settled by next week.
He said this when asked to comment on restaurants that had been forced to close due to a shortage of workers.
Acknowledging that there were restaurants which were finding it hard to get workers, the minister said: “We have already started giving (workers to) restaurants in stages.
“By next week, (the labour shortage at) all restaurants will be settled, there will be no more delays”.
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Saravanan was speaking to the media at a “meet the people” session organised by MIC.
The Malaysian Muslim Restaurant Owners Association (Presma) had said that 1,500 Indian-Muslim restaurants were expected to close nationwide due to the lack of migrant workers and difficulty in sourcing local labour.
The freeze on the intake of migrant workers during the Covid-19 pandemic saw the restaurant sector faced with a labour crunch, especially after migrant workers who left the country after their work permits expired were unable to return.
The freeze was lifted last month, with the government allowing applications to hire about 400,000 migrant workers.
In a statement yesterday, Saravanan said that Putrajaya had agreed to bring in 10,000 migrant workers from Sri Lanka after a request from the country in view of its economic crisis.
When asked why the uptake of workers from Sri Lanka was lower than that of countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh, Saravanan said this could be due to language, religion and cultural barriers.
However, he noted that the recruitment of Indonesian and Bangladeshi workers had started to decline.
“So, we suggest that employers hire (workers) from other countries, and not be too dependent on just a few. When we are too dependent on a specific country, there will be many conditions.”
Saravanan explained that over-reliance on labour from specific countries would give those countries the leverage to dictate many conditions when negotiating the terms of a memorandum of understanding. - FMT

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