Govt Studying Whether UAE's Law On Foreign Workers Suitable For M'sia, Says M'sian Deputy PM

From Ahmad Shukran Shaharudin ABU DHABI, May 10 (Bernama) -- The government is studying whether the law on foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is suitable for adoption in Malaysia, said Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. He said the matter was raised and discussed at length during his meeting with UAE Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also Minister of the Interior, during his official visit to the UAE beginning last Monday. "I had requested to see an example of their law, whether it is suitable for adoption in Malaysia. "How they manage it (the law). (UAE) has the same experience where foreigners enter (the country) and disappear," he told Malaysian journalists before concluding his visit here. Muhyiddin, who is also Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Workers and Illegal Immigrants, said the formulation of the law on foreign workers in the UAE took into consideration the large number of such workers. The UAE has a population of 1.2 million while the number of foreign workers in the country is five million. -- MORE MUHYIDDIN-WORKERS 2 ABU DHABI He said Malaysia and the UAE also exchanged experiences on the foreign workers issue including the system to track down the workers using specific law prevailing in the Arab nation. On his meeting with the UAE Education Minister, Humaid Mohammed Obaid Al-Qatami, Muhyiddin, who is also the Malaysian Education Minister, said a form of cooperation would be created through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in the field of education. "Currently, there is an MoU for higher education with the UAE but it has yet to be finalised...we discussed the MoU pertaining to education at the secondary and primary schools stage in Malaysia. "When the MoU is prepared later, we will specify the scope and fields of cooperation such as teacher training, co-curriculum and raising the standard of our education and learning," he said. On the Education Transformation Summit Meeting 2012 which was held for the first time, he said it was timely because Malaysia too was undergoing the same process. He said this meant that education was an important issue among all the countries where education quality was fundamental instead of the system. Muhyiddin said the review process was important because the country was facing the era of globalisation which was more challenging where the education was not merely limited to normal education but must be innovative and based on knowledge. On the National Education Dialogue, he said the government did not restrict it to a certain school level only because pre-school education was also under the jurisdiction of the Education Ministry. He said the ministry was also considering to raise quality including that of pre-school teachers who currently included those without high qualification. He hoped that those who were currently running pre-schools should as far as possible engage graduate teachers or at least recruit those with diplomas and were trained to guide children at the pre-school stage. -- BERNAMA