About 150 Bangladeshis have “set up home” along the banks of Sungai Gombak near the Damai LRT in Kuala Lumpur, Kosmo! reported.
Living on coconut scraps and selling empty plastic bottles they fish out of the river, the Bangladeshis said they had to live this way as their agents have not given them work.
Mostak Meah said they had been in Malaysia for about four months. They decided to move out of their temporary home in Kajang to be near to their High Commission.
“We have been here for five days and it allows us to be near the High Commission where we can meet the officers to ask if there are any jobs,” he said.
Another Bangladeshi said that while they were staying in Kajang, they were provided food but their minds were not at ease as they were jobless.
“We came here to work, not to be treated as detainees living in cramped conditions,” he said.
> Berita Harian reported that the Selangor Government has proposed to charge each of the 1.5 million foreign workers in the state RM9 per month, or RM100 a year, to solve the problem of jobless youths.
Mentri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim said the money received from the employers of foreign workers would be used to train local youths.
He said the main factor for unemployed youths was because jobs were snapped up by foreign workers who were willing to work for a low salary.
> Meanwhile, an economic lecturer has called on the Government to introduce new policies to reduce the income gaps between the ethnic groups to show fairness to the rakyat.
Universiti Utara Malaysia economic lecturer Haim Hilman Abdullah told Utusan Malaysia this was important in order to get rid of the perception by non-Malays that the New Economic Policy (NEP) did not benefit them.
He said some Malays also felt that the NEP only benefited particular groups.
