Soon, there will be no more middlemen such as agents to assist in the hiring of foreign workers in Malaysia. A joint committee between the home ministry and human resources ministry on the management of foreign workers has decided to do away with the outsourcing of foreign worker recruitment to agencies by next year.

There are at least 100 companies handling over 26,000 foreign workers involved in the outsourcing system in Malaysia, said Home Minister Tan Muhyiddin Yassin, according to a report by The Edge Markets. The committee will hold discussions with these companies to figure out the new arrangement later, the report adds.

The human resource ministry will now deal with the matter and the existing agents will be given time so they can relocate their employees to selected employers. The move is aimed to avoid unfair treatment of the workers and other issues related to workers, Yassin said.

The immigration department has issued temporary passes to a total of 1,892,247 foreign workers. Some of the countries Malaysia sources foreign workers include Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Myanmar, the report adds.