Maid in Malaysia: Door opens for Nepali jobseekers

Maid in Malaysia: Door opens for Nepali jobseekers
eKantipur.com, 10-Oct-07

The Malaysian government is soon allowing its citizens to recruit housemaids from Nepal and three other countries, opening a new avenue for aspiring female overseas jobseekers.

According to news reports, Malaysia is preparing to accept a new group of foreign workers from its existing pool of labor exporting countries in order to ease the shortage of domestic workers.

Malaysian daily the Malaysia Star said that Malaysians would soon be able to hire maids from Nepal, India, Laos and Vietnam because of increasing domestic demand as well as the difficulty in getting domestic helpers from Indonesia, its major source country.

The report quoted Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak as saying that the recruitment from the four countries including Nepal would take place once memorandums of understanding were signed with the respective countries.

Talking to the press after chairing the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Workers Wednesday, Najib said the Human Resource Ministry would conduct a study on the country's need for foreign workers while also taking into consideration the problems that came with having more of them.

“Based on the findings of the study, the committee will decide on a policy on foreign worker recruitment,” the report quoted Najib as saying.

“This is good news, but we have not received any official confirmation about it,” said Keshar Bahadur Baniya, director general of the Department of Labor.

Officials at the Ministry of Labor also failed to reconfirm the report. If true, it will enable Nepal to send a substantial number of female workers to Malaysia, they said.

So far, Nepal has sent a meager number of women workers to Malaysia who were absorbed into jobs other than domestic work.

According to the Labor Department's data, a total of 71,074 Nepalis left for jobs in Malaysia during the last fiscal year, making it the most popular destination for Nepali workers.

Reports say that Malaysia currently employs 317,537 foreign maids, most of whom are from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

As of September 30 this year, there were 2,021,099 foreign workers employed in various sectors in Malaysia, including manufacturing, plantation, housework, construction, service industry and agriculture.

Of the total number of overseas workers employed in Malaysia, 57 percent were from Indonesia and 11 percent were from Nepal, according to the official data of the Malaysian government.