Is the 1977, album by Bob Marley, that produced monster hits such as Exodus, Three Little Birds, Jamming and One Love.
The lyrics to Exodus, goes something like this :
Exodus, movement of Jah people
Exodus, movement of Jah people
Open your eyes and look within
Are you satisfied with the life you're living?
We know where we're going; we know where we're from
The Singapore Straits Times, will want us to believe that, foreign workers are planning to leave Malaysia in droves.
If this is INDEED TRUE, Why are the GOVERNMENT of some of the countries mentioned, DELIRIOUS in wanting to SIGN G2G agreement with OUR government on allowing their citizens to ROAM freely in OUR country?
Anyway, here is the story, from the Singapore point of view :
Foreign workers in Malaysia squeezed by ringgit slide
The Straits Times/Asia News Network / 09:02 AM December 04, 2016
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Currency woes erode wages and may lead to exodus, leaving employers short of labor.
Naim Ahmed, a Bangladeshi floor manager at a popular pub in Kuala Lumpur’s Sri Hartamas suburb, likes the life that he has built in six years as a migrant worker in Malaysia.
But the recent depreciation of the ringgit and the widely held view that the currency could weaken further is forcing him to consider returning home or looking for employment elsewhere.
“When I first arrived in 2012, 1 ringgit would give me 27 (Bangladeshi) taka. Now after the deductions, I am lucky to get 17 taka (21 US cents),” said the lanky 28-year-old, who adds that the roughly 37 per cent drop in his wages over the last six years has made it difficult for him to meet the monthly installment payments on his debt to an employment agency in Dhaka and send money to his wife and mother.
Asian currencies have been battered following Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the United States’ presidential election, with the ringgit the hardest hit because of concerns that the country’s regulators may impose capital controls to check the slide.
The Malaysian currency has slipped more than 5.4 per cent over the last one month against the greenback, making it the second-biggest decliner after the Japanese yen.
Apart from slumping to an all-time low of 3.12 ringgit against the Singapore dollar this week, the ringgit has also lost ground to other currencies such as the Indonesian rupiah and the Bangladeshi taka.
The slide is taking a toll on an economy highly dependent on foreign labor.
“The large companies are considering making adjustments in the wages and subsidizing the amount of money workers can send home.
But workers for smaller companies are unlikely to renew their employment permits because of the high cost,” Shamsuddin Bardan, executive director of the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF), told The Straits Times.
According to the MEF, there are 2.1 million legal foreign workers out of the country’s workforce of roughly 15.4 million.
However, there are estimated to be another 2.2 million unregistered or illegal workers, which means the total number of foreign workers breaches the government’s limit of 15 per cent of the entire workforce.
To counter the potential exodus of foreign workers, Bardan said that MEF has made representations to the government to consider allowing the roughly 160,000 refugees in the country, comprising mainly Rohingya and a smattering of Syrians, to fill the void.
“The government may wish to treat refugees allowed to work differently and not necessarily under temporary work permits like the foreign workers currently,” said Bardan.
But MEF is unclear about how such a plan will be implemented.
