Dependency of Foreign Workers in Malaysian Construction Industry

An, Sin Ni (2019) Dependency of Foreign Workers in Malaysian Construction Industry. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

The Malaysian construction industry plays an important role in generating wealth to the economy of the country as well as the development of social and economic buildings and infrastructures. Undeniably, the construction industry in Malaysia involves large number of foreign workers. Majority of the construction firms preferred to employ foreign workers because of the low hiring cost and also due to the unpleasant working environment (3D – Dirty, Dangerous, and Difficult) which is unacceptable to the local workers. Therefore, the numbers of foreign workers have increased gradually. In fact, the influx of foreign workers has brought about negative impacts to human health such as malaria and cholera and social problems such as robberies. These shortcomings have indeed affected the economic growth of our country. Hence, the intention of this paper is to investigate the reasons which leads to dependency of foreign workers in Malaysian construction field and to identify the approaches in reducing dependency on foreign workers from the perspective of contractors. This study focuses only on the opinions of registered contractors in Kuala Lumpur area. The opinions of related respondents were obtained from questionnaire surveys and phone interviews to give a clearer picture of the current situation of dependency level of foreign workers in Malaysian construction industry. It was found that more than half of the reasons disclosed in the questionnaires are the reasons which lead to the dependency of foreign workers. The reasons are low hiring cost, local workers less willing to work in Malaysian construction industry, easy employment of foreign workers, foreign workers are more hardworking, willing to work overtime, willing to stay in a less comfortable accommodation and others. It was also found from the general opinion of the respondents that all the approaches listed are viable, but stronger agreements are seen on the adoption of IBS-based system to the construction projects with the help from the Government. This study makes theoretical contributions by clarifying that the listed factors bring significant effects to the dependency of foreign workers in Malaysian construction industry and the results obtained may have certain reliability and validity to make the approaches practical and workable as the responses were collected from registered contractors who act as employers to the foreign workers. This study enhances the directions for the relevant parties such as Government, CIDB, and IBS-related companies to implement future strategies in order to minimise the dependency of foreign workers in Malaysian construction industry. The professional boards such as CIDB or IBS-related companies need to restructure awareness programs to the form like comprehensive awareness programs and showcases of best practices for IBS to be understood and widely used. The utilization of CLAB and establishment of ABM are also expected to be more effective.