The term “counter setting” may be new to many Malaysians, but it is very familiar to undocumented foreign workers. The counter setting scam in which certain immigration officers linked to labour supply rings let in job-seeking foreigners at airports and other checkpoints has been going on for years and contributed to the large number of undocumented foreign workers in the country. For sure, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) seizure of RM800,000 from the homes of two junior immigration officers is just the tip of the iceberg.

Corrupt Immigration Department officers are said to reap millions annually from this scam. They work hand in hand with labour agents to facilitate the entry and exit of undocumented foreign workers. The modus operandi of these syndicates, as disclosed by MACC, is as follows: It starts with foreign workers who want to work in Malaysia but are unable to get the necessary documents. They contact local agents who arrange with certain immigration officers to set up specific dates for their arrival.

Upon arrival, the foreign workers are told to go to specific counters being manned by the compromised immigration officers who are supplied with pictures of the foreign workers in question. Entry documents are stamped and the foreign worker enters the country seeking employment.

A similar modus operandi is at play for undocumented foreign workers leaving the country. When an undocumented foreign worker wants to go home, he or she gets a travel document from their embassy in Malaysia. Under normal procedure, these foreign workers undergo a biometric test at the immigration exit point where their fingerprints are recorded. They pay a fine and leave the country and cannot return because they have been blacklisted.

But a number leave Malaysia with the intention of returning. These foreign workers pay agents who take them to certain immigration counters to process their exit. At the point of departure, they do not undergo the biometric test, so they are not blacklisted. Hence, they are able to return with a fresh set of documents from their country of origin.

This scheme has reportedly been going on for years. The undocumented workers do not fear the prospect of serving a jail sentence or paying a hefty fine when they leave the country. They just pay agents who set counters to process their exit documents. A few months or a year later, they are back in the country with new travel documents.

Last week, MACC arrested 49 immigration officers, someone from the police force and 10 agents for allegedly colluding to set counters. According to MACC, they seized a total of RM800,000 in cash from the homes of two relatively low-ranking immigration officers. One can only imagine how much someone higher up would have pocketed over the years to facilitate counter setting.

The swoop by MACC will not stop the practice of counter setting though. It will only disrupt the scheme until the heat dissipates, then it will resume. This is because the amount of money to be made illegally easily runs into millions and is simply irresistible.

Malaysia has 143 entry points via sea, air and land that are primarily manned by the Immigration Department and Customs Department. Come next month, a new agency called the Malaysia Checkpoint and Border Agency (MCBA) will enter the fray to oversee operations at these entry points.

Director general Datuk Seri Hazani Ghazali, who was handpicked to lead MCBA in January this year, is reported to have said that the agency will take over the operations at the 143 entry points in stages beginning next month.

Hazani was the director of Internal Security and Public Order in Bukit Aman and before that, he was the commander of the Eastern Sabah Security Command (ESSCOM) following the Lahad Datu incursion in 2013.

The bill to set up MCBA was passed in July and the agency’s primary function is to coordinate the security and enforcement operations of six ministries and MACC at the 143 entry points in stages. The six ministries are defence, finance, agriculture and food security, health, transport and natural resources and environmental sustainability.

Essentially, MCBA will be the single agency to coordinate and monitor the work of 20 enforcement agencies, including the Immigration Department and Customs Department. MCBA will oversee the movement of people, any kinds of goods and vehicles and the issuance of permits at the entry points.

What’s interesting is that the scope of MCBA’s functions include undertaking surveillance work and gathering intelligence for purposes of enhancing border control. It essentially is the police of enforcement agencies at entry points.

The abuse of power is not only in the Immigration Department. In March this year, MACC hauled up 34 officers from the Customs Department at the Kuala Lumpur International Cargo Complex in Sepang for allegedly facilitating the smuggling of contraband, causing the government to lose an estimated RM2 billion in unpaid duties over two years.

The customs officers are suspected to have received bribes of RM4.7 million during the period.

The amount of money that changes hands at border entry points is huge. It is far more than MACC’s biggest seizure of money and assets in Sabah in October 2016, in what is famously known as the Sabah Watergate scandal. MACC recovered RM61.6 million in hard cash, traced another RM30 million to foreign banks and seized luxury goods and items worth several million more. Three people, including two former top officials from the Sabah Waterworks Department, are facing 37 charges of money laundering involving cash and savings of RM61.6 million.

The monetary rewards to enforcement officers for turning a blind eye at entry points is so lucrative that it is difficult to stop the abuse. Whether MCBA’s entry as the coordinating agency will change this situation is left to be seen.

Source: Theedgemarkets

As job growth has slowed and unemployment has crept up, some economists have pointed to a sign of confidence among employers: They are, for the most part, holding on to their existing workers.

Despite headline-grabbing job cuts at a few big companies, overall layoffs remain below their levels during the strong economy before the pandemic. Applications for unemployment benefits, which drifted up in the spring and summer, have recently been falling.

But past recessions suggest that layoff data alone should not offer much comfort about the labour market. Historically, job cuts have come only once an economic downturn was well under way.

The milder recession in 2001 offers an even clearer example. The unemployment rate rose steadily from 4.3 per cent in May to 5.7 per cent at the end of the year. But apart from a brief spike in the fall, layoffs hardly rose.

Earlier recessions followed a similar pattern, for what economists say is a straightforward reason: Layoffs are disruptive, expensive and bad for morale. So companies try to avoid cutting jobs until they have no choice – sometimes waiting longer than financial logic would dictate.

“It’s costly to lay someone off,” said Mr Parker Ross, global chief economist at Arch Capital, an insurer. “That’s something that generally firms turn to as a last resort.”

Companies may be unusually reluctant to lay off workers now because many struggled to hire after the pandemic recession. Even if business slows, Mr Ross said, employers may prefer to retain workers rather than risk being short staffed again if the economy rebounds.

That reluctance is good news for workers in the short run. But it poses a risk: If the economy worsens more than businesses anticipate, they could be forced to shed workers in a hurry. If that happens, economic conditions could unravel quickly, as job losses cause consumers to pull back on spending, leading to more losses.

“That’s what everybody worries about, because unemployment begets unemployment begets unemployment,” said Mr Andrew Challenger, senior vice-president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm that tracks labour market data.

Unemployment can rise even without a surge in layoffs, however. What really distinguishes a recession isn’t job losses, but a slowdown in hiring.

That may be counterintuitive, given how synonymous “recessions” and “job losses” are in the popular imagination. Layoffs happen even in a healthy economy – but when people lose their jobs in recessions, they struggle to find new ones.

“When a hiring manager decides not to fill a position, that doesn’t tend to make headlines” the way a plant closing might, said Professor Robert Shimer, a University of Chicago economist. But those decisions – multiplied across the economy – can lead to rising joblessness, he said. In a 2012 paper, he found that roughly three-quarters of the fluctuation in the unemployment rate resulted from shifts in the hiring rate.

In other words, it is hiring, not layoffs, that tends to signal a looming recession. And hiring has already slowed.

Source: Straitstimes

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