PRIORITY: Hire locals as they are keen to work in the sector, urges Muhyiddin

PUTRAJAYA: AS  the number of locals interested in working  in the fast-food industry picks up, foreign workers are relegated to other sectors.

For this reason, the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Workers and Illegal Immigrants agreed yesterday that all fast-food and similar concept restaurants must give priority to hire locals.

"The operators are not allowed to hire foreign workers because many locals are keen to work in fast-food restaurants.

"The growing interest among local job-seekers can be attributed to the less demanding cooking skills needed in fast-food outlets. 

"The skills needed in these outlets can be learnt," said the committee in a statement issued after its meeting chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday.

In this respect, the jobs at such outlets had attracted many locals, including youths, school-leavers and university students, who wanted to earn extra pocket money and gain work experiences, either as part-time or full-time employees.

Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry's communication unit had defined a fast-food outlet as a business facility preparing fast-food services, such as McDonald's, Burger King and KFC. This classification does not apply to food-and-beverage outlets that hired waitresses, such as Kopitiam or Starbucks.

On Dec 27, 2011, the government had announced that it would allow foreign workers to be employed as croupiers, newspaper vendors, grass-cutters as well as house and vehicle cleaners.

They could also be employed by workshops. They are also allowed to work in mining/quarrying, mangrove-logging, food beverage businesses and fast-food sector.

The sub-sectors relaxed for their employment are scrap metal, cargo-handling, welfare home, spa/reflexology, hotel, golf caddy, laundry, barber, goldsmith, wholesale as well as retail and textile business.

The committee had also decided to extend the Bangladesh government-to-government mechanism to be used by the Sarawak government to fill the vacancies in the palm oil sector.

"The decision is based on the positive impact when the mechanism was executed in Peninsular Malaysia.

"It is capable of overcoming issues in hiring foreign workers, including in their entry method, security and health screening between both nations," it added.

The committee urged employers who had claimed that they were cheated by agents and middlemen during the recent 6P programme to come forward to the Home Ministry's one-stop centre.