Additional assessment for homes for foreign workers

01/05/2008 The Star By Dharmender Singh

SHAH ALAM: The Selangor government is looking into introducing an additional assessment charge for residential units used to house foreign workers in order to have a better record on the placement of such workers.

Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim said Selangor was studying provisions under the state government's jurisdiction to charge the additional assessment and felt that it was within its means to do so.

He said having the additional charges would provide the government with detailed information on where the foreign workers in the state worked and lived so that it could better plan the future of the state.

"Right now we know that there are over 1.5 million foreign workers in the state but we do not know how many there are in each district or where these people live," he told a press conference after receiving contributions from state owned companies for the Selangor Sukma contingent here on Wednesday.

He said the state was also dealing with the problems of foreign workers being housed in places such as low cost homes and reserve land, so having detailed information was vital in ensuring an end to such problems.

"There is no reason that Selangor, as one the states with the highest number of foreign workers, cannot have a detailed information system when Singapore has been able to do this efficiently," he said when answering questions on whether the state government would continue with its plans to introduce a levy on foreign workers that would be used to provide training for local youths.

Khalid said the additional charges would also in turn help the foreign workers as they would have better living conditions while employers would no longer have to fear that their workers might run away and work for another employers since they were more easily tracked.