Kopi Talk with Malai Hassan Othman

BUSINESS COMMUNITY TENSE OVER NEW EMPLOYMENT POLICY CHANGES

A friend came to me as I was about to step in the mosque for Friday prayer. It was just few minutes away before Friday mass prayer commences.

He graciously greeted me and handshakes followed. Looking upsets, he then put his arm around my shoulders, pulled me close to him and said, “So what do you think of the new employment order?”

“You know we should protest”, he groaned as my brain busily processed some answers to his first question. 

And as I was about to offer him my opinion, he mocked, “The minister and the officials…what do they know (of our difficulty)”.

“It’s easy for them lah to say this and that, but it is us who will suffer. For them okay lah! What do they have to worry? Anyway they will still get their fat checks every end of the month!!! For us things will get more difficult". 

"Before it was the energy department and its ‘big idea’ and now this”, he moaned and said, “the least they could do was to talk to us first, the business people, prior to making such ‘counterproductive’ decision". 

"You should write about this issue, quizzed them”, he suggested.

“Okay, okay,” I said while putting a smile on my face.

I sighed with relief as he frees his arm from my shoulders.

Good thing I didn’t have the chance to tell him where I stand in this issue.

Good thing we didn’t have much time to converse otherwise I would be bragging to him that I was at the dinner that evening and that I dared myself to walk up to the minister and to congratulate him personally for the firm move and good strategy in addressing our unemployment and influx of foreign workers issues.

Good thing I didn’t tell my friend that I jokingly told the minister how I fell like hugging him and kissing him right there and then for the good news. I can imagine what will happen to me! 

With my upset friend’s arm around my shoulder and very close to my neck, for all I know he could easily strangle me.

So I was spared from that unpleasant situation.   

However the question of what I thought about the new policy changes in the nation employment sector preoccupied my mind while my ears try hard to listen to the imam delivering his Friday sermon.     

So what do I think of it?

Well I have no objection if it means paving the way in efforts to truly create a fair playing field in the nation job market and a healthier environment for local entrepreneurs to thrive especially in the wholesale, retail, hospitality and restaurant businesses.

I fully support it if it means a better and more promising future for our children, if it could bring to an end to the abuse and discrimination by profit driven employers against our locals. 

I fully support it as it opens up an opportunity to employers to stop giving excuses and instead to start working together in developing the capability and capacity of the local workforce that they have been complaining about and using as an excuse not to employ locals all these years.
           

Unemployment is a persistent issue of concern in Brunei so is the growing numbers of foreign workers in the country. 


In one hand, we have the issue of our local having difficulty to find jobs but on the other hand, we are seeing foreigners thronging the country and ironically with no difficulty at all to find jobs.


As of last year the population of expats and foreign workers stood at 112,378. Their population has the potential to rapidly grow to almost 200,000 if several employers that collectively have 71,282 unused quotas at their disposal decide to make use all of them.

This is one of the loose ends that the ministry sees fit to tighten up quickly. Apparently this is one loophole in the current system that causes the influx of unneeded foreign workers in the country. 


So the final decision has been made, that is to revoke these 71,282 quotas with immediate effect.

At the same time the policy to freeze the issuance of foreign labour quota for posts such as cashiers, driver, supervisors, salesclerk, shop staff, butcher, baker as well as taking steps to freeze foreign labour quota for those in the wholesale and retail industry, hospitality, ict, support services and so on will continue.

The objective is to effectively make available job positions that can be filled by locals.   

According to the Local Employment and Human Resource Development Agency (APTK) of the Home Affairs Ministry, there were 4,414 unemployed Bruneians throughout all four districts with Brunei-Muara having the largest number of unemployed individuals at 2,944 during the year 2011.


At present there are some 6, 130 jobs available but only 36 percent of it were filled by locals while the remaining vacancies were taken up by foreigners.


As the Minister of Home Affairs once said, there were actually plenty of jobs for the 5,000 or so job seekers registered with the ministry.

He has his point for saying that.

Results from latest research on the availability of employment opportunities in the private sector in 2013 indicates that there were 27,827 workers taking up various job positions in the wholesale, retail, hospitality and automobile sectors. 17,000 or 61% of them were foreigners, 8,144 were local citizens while only 2,683 were permanent residents.

In summary, the policy changes have been made to tackle two distinct objectives namely overcoming unemployment by encouraging (or some say arm twisting) employers to hire local workforce and to control the influx of foreign labour by employing only as needed.

Of course another objective is to arrest the mushrooming of ‘Ali Baba’ businesses especially in the retail and in restaurant business in the country.

The changes include a levy on the employment of foreign labour for several sectors. The collections from this scheme will be channelled back to fund capacity building training programs for local workforce in the private sector.  

Other changes are, to limit the issue of new miscellaneous business license identified as branch out with the exception of businesses with the potential to attract local employees and to limit the number of new licenses for conventional restaurants (coffee shops, food outlets) and lastly to not issue licenses to businesses established in residential areas/ villages unless the business is personally run by the applicant or locals.

Undoubtedly, these policy changes have ruffled some business owners’ feathers. It is understandable especially when changes like this pose a threat to their interest.

But least we forgot, the nation today is facing far greater danger than those employment issues and the influx of foreign workers. Poverty, the worrying trend of social problems spreading like diseases from within our society and so and so forth are issues that are now haunting us.

The biggest threat to our survivality is actually our complacency and our indifference towards the future of our next generation and the interest of the nation at large. Whatever happening today to our economy, our business sector, employment sector are actually the consequences of our apathy as a community over the future of the nation and also due to the persevering culture of inertia in the government machinery.  

In a sense, we are actually the victims of our own doing. So to me I welcome any opportunity to remedy these shortcomings that, for all these years have been a hindrance to our progress.