The PAC report also found that the government could terminate its IT system contract with Bestinet only with the agreement of both parties, putting it in a challenging situation.
The Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4), a prominent local anti-graft watchdog, said that the government’s continued reliance on Bestinet’s Foreign Workers Centralised Management System (FWCMS) raised serious questions and reflected poorly on the Home Ministry.
“Absurdly, on 24 June, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail announced that the government had decided to extend Bestinet’s contract to run the FWCMS for another three years, despite there being no contract to begin with. In light of the numerous instances of misgovernance, how did this decision by the government even come to pass?” C4 said in a statement.
How the Anwar administration moves to bring reform to the country’s troubled labour sector, which is central to injecting fresh dynamism to a sluggish economy, is being watched closely.
“The current government, which was in the opposition before, knows the problems,” said Mr Charles Santiago, a former elected MP who is part of a government-private sector working committee involved in bringing change to the country’s migrant labour recruitment system.
“A sweeping overhaul to our labour sector should be at the central plank of the government’s form agenda because the abuses and misconduct have for a long time been a strain on the economy because of our dependence on cheap foreign labour and little attention to upskilling our workforce,” he said.
LABOUR IS BIG BUSINESS
Labour is big business in Malaysia and has long been steeped in the country’s murky patronage politics.
The country’s decades-old addiction to cheap labour has spawned a multi-billion commercial complex packed with companies offering training in small batches or in much wider settings, through conferences and seminars.
Separately, the migrant labour recruitment system has created opportunities for labour brokers working with countries exporting manpower, agents representing local employers and also so-called “runners” who are typically individuals or companies that help iron out wrinkles in the approval process with government agencies.
In these segments of the economy, HRD Corp and Bestinet enjoy unrivalled dominance.
Because of the large sums of money involved, labour activists have long maintained that the entire system of upskilling and foreign recruitment is riddled with corruption, mismanagement and human rights abuses, and has been propped up by politicians and powerful business enterprises.
“The (alleged) abuses at HRD Corp and Bestinet have been going on for a long time, particularly with funding politically-linked groups and doing things outside its purview of skills development for workers,” Mr N Gopal Kishnam, who heads the Labour Law Reform Coalition, a group of unions and non-governmental organisations, told CNA.
