..of Banglas and Teppenyakis...

Salaam and Good Blessings...


Last Friday, like any other Friday evenings, my family would go out for dinner as the kitchen closes every Friday evening to give it a break. Stumped in deciding where to eat amongst our usual locale I suggested for the family to go to the FOOD GARDEN, a food court at THE GARDENS.

The last time we were there was to grab a quick drink before the start of our evenings at the movies. Since it was too close to movie starting time, we dashed in, bought the drinks and moved on. But the brief moment in FOOD GARDEN impressed me with the choices of food and the attractive ambience of the settings.

Last Friday, I thought that it would be a good place to try our meal there. There were many stalls and the choices were rangy too. From Japanese to Korean to Middle Eastern and Indonesian specialties and the usual local dishes. As my family and I walked around to decide what to eat, one thing struck my mind! The workers were ALL BANGLAs, and I mean ALL the stalls!!!! The Japanese dishes were attractive but the teppenyaki was prepared by Banglas, so was the KOREAN and Middle Eastern stalls and even the bus boys were bhais too.

I have nothing against our hard working bhais of Banglas and do not also undermine their skills in anything (especially in culinary that night). But this visit just led me to think how dependent our nation is on foreign labor. We even have "Little Nepal" and "Little Myanmars" in some parts of KL on account of the ginormous number of them on shore. Not to mention the huge population of "mas" and "embak"

Local statistics on foreign workers in Malaysia can shed some light on this issue. Guess how many foreign workers we have here....almost 2million! and these are the legal ones. It is also estimated that there is just as many of them onshore illegally!!!

Malaysia is the largest employer of foreign labor in ASEAN. Remittance by our "bhais" and "mas" accounts about 1.5% of our GDP. Between 1995 to 2005 there was an increase of 33% in foreign labor and 98%of them are low skilled migrant workers. We have about 10 million hard working people pedaling our economy growth after growth and a whopping 38% of them are not from within our shores. The New Malaysian Economic Model revealed by Najib last March indicated that too high a dependency on foreign labor is hampering our growth towards a developed nation.

Numbers usually tell a story, here is the % of highly skilled labor in these nations, take a look...
25%- MALAYSIA
49%- SINGAPORE
35%- SOUTH KOREA

This says 75% of our (MALAYSIAN) work force are of the low skilled category so that means low wages. So how la my friends to convert Malaysia into a high income economy!

Think about this people...

Btw...the food at THE FOOD GARDENS...okaay only la!