Foreign Workers: The HoooHaaa About Them By Locals (Malaysians)

Kuala Lumpur - Last month January 2016, I was a speaker at a conference organised by the association representing manufacturers. 

One participant stood up to disagree with my analogy that foreign workers are like drugs. I said "...once you are into it, you will be addicted to it forever."

The participant was an HR officer of a manufacturing company. He said he tried his utmost best to recruit locals as factory workers. There was no major issue in offering jobs to locals. If he could, he would ensure all the workers were locals.

BUT he lamented that there was a serious problem with the locals. He said "the company appoint them today, they resign tomorrow, next week, next month!" and followed by a big round of applause from the floor. "....unlike the foreign workers, they worked for 2-3 years!" as he continued. He further went on saying "we cannot afford to shut down the production line, retrain the new comers every time there is a resignation/absenteeism by the local employee."

Business must go on but apparently our very own people are not keen to do these kind of jobs. There is a huge vacuum that must be filled. Who should fill in the 'blank'?