Malaysian restaurants call for Rohingya refugees to fill 25,000 job vacancies

Malaysian Indian business owners are urging the government to lift a ban on the hiring of new foreign workers amid a staffing crisis

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A boat carrying suspected ethnic Rohingya migrants in Malaysian territorial waters. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:14pm, 3 Feb 2025Updated: 3:19pm, 3 Feb 2025

Malaysian restaurant groups are urging the government to allow them to hire Rohingya refugees and recent migrants from India, with a ban on new foreign workers leaving as many as 25,000 food service roles unfilled even as many locals shun these jobs that are seen as lowly paid.

For decades, Malaysia has relied on foreign workers – mainly from Bangladesh, Indonesia and Myanmar – to staff its farms, factories, construction sites and service industries.

In April last year, the government stopped businesses from hiring new migrant workers to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign labour and create more jobs for Malaysians.

The ban followed a major corruption and debt bondage scandal inside the Bangladeshi workforce supply chain involving syndicates filling job quotas in Malaysia.

With 2.47 million documented foreign workers as of December, their proportion compared with Malaysia’s total workforce hit the 15 per cent cap that month, according to the government.

The ban on new foreign workers has left huge shortages in the food service sector even though the ranks of unemployed remain relatively high. The number of unemployed in Malaysia fell from 551,400 in October to 546,000 in November.