KUALA LUMPUR: Cuepacs opposes any proposal to allow foreign students, including those completing their studies at local higher education institutions, to work in the country to address the skilled labour shortage.
Cuepacs president, Datuk Dr Adnan Mat, said the policy of allowing foreign students to work in the country not only denies opportunities for local citizens but also harms the nation that has invested heavily in producing highly skilled local graduates.
He mentioned that various programmes have been established by local higher education institutions with significant investments to produce highly skilled graduates in line with the government's aspirations.
"At present, the country is on the right track in producing highly skilled local graduates and no longer needs to rely on foreign labour.
"So, allowing foreign students to fill up job opportunities in the high-tech sector in Malaysia is akin to putting others first before our own.
"It is also a step backward if this policy is implemented by the government, considering our efforts to produce highly skilled graduates to meet market demands," he said in a media statement here today.
Earlier, in a report on the Investment, Trade, and Industry (MITI) Ministry portal, Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz was reported to be considering allowing foreign students who completed their studies at local institutes to work in Malaysia to address the shortage of skilled workers in several sectors, including in the electrical and electronics (E&E) sector.
Meanwhile, Adnan said that the proposal is also deemed unfair and could result in local graduates receiving lower salaries, besides increasing future unemployment rates.
"The main problem currently is that many skilled local workers migrate abroad to work because they are offered more reasonable and worthwhile salary schemes.
"Compared to their countries of origin, local employers here are more willing to pay high salaries to foreign workers even though the quality of our own workers is better," he said, alleging favouritism in payment of wages that leads to a brain drain of skilled workers from Malaysia.
This is because some employers are willing to pay up to RM4,000 per month to skilled foreign workers, but for local skilled workers, they offer starting salaries below RM2,000.
Furthermore, he said that the government needs to enforce a more reasonable minimum wage for highly skilled local workers to support the human resources development policies implemented by local higher education institutions.
"It is useless to produce highly skilled human resources if the job market does not offer reasonable wages.
"At the same time, Cuepacs believes that through the data collected via Padu, it can serve as a basis for the government to analyse the sustainability of the country's energy resources and appropriate wage rates in the future.
"In the end, Malaysia can succeed and progress on its own terms and be enjoyed by our people, as done by advanced countries such as Japan, South Korea, and others," he said.