Malaysia's employers can apply to fire foreign workers early

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb. 3 (Chinese media) -- Companies with foreign workers and are facing the economic crunch can now apply to let go these workers even if their service contracts have yet to expire, Malaysian Human Resource Minister Subramaniam said in Langkawi, northern Kedah state on Tuesday.

"I have discussed this with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and it is to help companies that are affected by the economic downturn," he told reporters after opening a hospitality course organized by the Manpower Department.

Besides this, companies that retrenched foreign workers could also reclaim any balance on levies already paid to the government, he said.

Prior to this, companies were having difficulty retrenching foreign workers because they had to honor the contracts with their foreign workers while the foreign worker levy had to be paid on an annual basis.

So far this year, the ministry had received applications from companies to retrench 9,000 workers of whom 6,000 were foreign workers, Subramaniam said.

Till Jan 31, a total of 15,000 workers were retrenched nationwide with most of them in the manufacturing sector, he said.

To address the problem of lay offs, his ministry had introduced re-training programs for workers with the government absorbing the costs, he added.

This was better than having employees asked to go on extended leave because of the slowdown, he said.