:Don't take chance on illegal workers: Au

SANDAKAN: Employers in the state must take the necessary action to legalize their foreign workers and not to take chance as this could lead to more hardship due to the risk practiced by possibly some of them to save cost by bypassing the proper channel.

Elopura State Assemblyman YB Au Kam Wah however said some employers are facing difficult times by engaging foreign workers as there are cases of such workers fleeing their job or simply moved to another work after just months of work. `Under the present system, employers need to pay a foreign workers for a duration of time and foreign workers fleeing their job had brought much losses to employers’, he explained in a press statement.

He said that the current operation against illegal immigrant in the state starting with the West Coast and would gradually venturing into East Coast and employers must not bet on keeping illegal workers and hope for the best.

`I am complimenting the governments’ effort in combating illegal immigrant but failure by employers to engage foreign workers through proper channel will in some way affect their livelihood’, he explained.

Au said that apart from asking employers to follow the proper procedures to engaged foreign workers, he is also asking the government to find ways to assist employers from sustaining such lost. He added that engaging a foreign worker is not only expensive but time consuming and could take months apart from being cumbersome for such legal worker to begin work. However, he urge the government to review the foreign worker’s application procedures by making ways for employers to pay the necessary levy on a monthly basis.

He explained that those involved in getting large number of foreign workers are from the plantation, construction and fishery sectors and their problem in keeping such foreign workers should be noted.