EMPLOYERS of Myanmar workers abroad are tightening their belts as the global financial crisis reduces demand for their companies products and services, a number of agents from Malaysia and Singapore said last week.

Measures including reduced salaries, cutbacks in overtime and hiring reductions began in the last week of October, several agents said.

Malaysia and Singapore are seen as the most profitable choice for the Myanmar workers abroad and offer relatively easy employment opportunities said U Win Myint, the managing director of Green Way overseas employment agency in Yangon.

He said the most immediate impact of the crisis has been a reduction in demand for new overseas workers.

“The calling letters for general workers from Malaysia’s companies have significantly decreased late October. Employees are also getting much fewer overtime hours: Normally each worker could expect up to three hours a day in overtime but many companies are cutting this back because their orders have been slashed,” he said.

Overtime hours are normally paid at about 3 ringgit an hour, giving workers an extra 300 ringgit a month in addition to their basic salary of about 500 ringgit. In total an average worker earns between 750-800 ringgit a month, U Win Myint said.

“The reduction in overtime is a problem for these general workers because they depend on that money to send home to Myanmar.

One factory worker in Malaysia confirmed the importance of overtime pay: “Normally we earn 18 or 20 ringgit a day as a basic salary but if we can work overtime we earn an extra 3 or 4 ringgit an hour.

“It’s hard work for us but if we don’t do it we can’t afford to send money back to our families,” he said.

And it’s a problem that has seen many of U Min Myint’s worker clients calling him about.

“Plenty of my clients have called me to ask for advice on what they should to and I can only tell them to be patient. Hopefully the downturn will only be for a short time.

“It’s a real worry for some of them because they have spent a lot of money to get these jobs – some of them have sold their houses or borrowed money to find this work,” he said.

Businesses that are feeling the heat or the downturn in orders from the United States or European Union include the furniture industry, food producers and housewares makers.

U Win Myint said that even though salaries have dropped from their previous levels, no workers have been retrenched yet.

Nor, it seems, has domestic demand for overseas jobs fallen.
“People are still coming to me to look for overseas employment,” he said, adding that most of these jobseekers are from rural townships.

Ko Tin Tun Oo, project engineer of a construction site in Singapore, said Malaysia is not the only overseas employment destination that is feeling the pinch of the credit crunch – he said it’s happening in Singapore too. He added that those companies heavily involved with EU or US firms are feeling it the worst.

Measures being used to cut spending in Singapore include reducing staff salaries and shedding unnecessary staff, he said.

“It’s hard to employ new workers in a crisis period and a number of companies that I deal with have postponed hiring new people, even though they have vacancies,” Ko Tin Tun Oo said.

One Myanmar con-struction worker in Singapore said the conditions he had been promised have not materialised.

“My company told me that overtime would be available and that I could make extra money if I wanted to. Unfortunately, they are not allowing overtime at the moment and the company deducts S$150 for meals and S$75 for housing from my $450 monthly salary.

“I can’t even send K100,000 a month back to my family,” he said.
Captain San Oo, the managing director of ECHO shipping line, said the shipping industry would also feel the bite of the credit crisis soon but said employers were likely to cut salaries rather than sack workers.

“Ship owners invest plenty of money training their seamen and will try as hard as possible to hold onto these people. However, they will probably cut wages to reduce their overall costs.”