Foreign workers will not run away from employers if they are paid accordingly, the Master Builders Association Malaysia is told.

Former Malaysian Trade Union Congress secretary-general Gopal Kishnam said after MBAM said foreign workers should pay their own levy, or they employers will bear risk of workers disappearing.

“If employers pay their foreign workers accordingly as mentioned in their contracts, the workers wouldn’t run away,” he told Malaysiakini.

Gopal mentioned that it is not easy for foreign workers to run away as they would end up in a much more vulnerable condition if caught by the police.

He added that foreign workers tend to run because they are not assigned to the promised job prior to arriving in Malaysia.

Disagreeing with MBAM, Gopal said foreign workers should not be paying their own levy because they come from financially unstable backgrounds back in their home country.

“I think that employers should pay for their foreign workers’ levy because they come from (countries with) less stable economy and they are here to earn money to support their families,” he said.

In response to the Malaysian Employers Federation’s (MEF) statement on cutting local workers’ bonus if they have to pay for foreign workers’ levy, Gopal said it depends whether the bonus was contractual.

“It is not right for companies to cut their workers’ bonus if the amount of bonus is fixed in their contract,” he said.

Gopal added that companies making enough profit and base the workers’ bonus on their Key Performance Indicator (KPI) should not have the need to cut their bonus.

He said private companies want to maximise their profits and they do so by hiring cheap labour or foreign workers.

Gopal also said employers find it difficult to employ local workers for 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) jobs because the local workers feel that they should have higher paid jobs.

“Employers should pay their workers the expected amount of salary so that they can attract and hire more local workers,” he said.