Foreign Labourers

I was at a convenience store at my sister's residence, ordering a tank of cooking gas, and the shop owner told me it can be delivered only around 4PM. I asked why and he said all his workers already went back to hometown. I asked him, was it because of Raya holidays (thinking they are locals) and he said no, they all left and went back to their home countries, which means they are foreigners. And chatting a bit further, I asked him when will they come back, and he said, no they are not coming. He is now engaging a local part-time delivery contractor. He said he has no intention to bring them back because the asking salaries are very high coupled the registration fees and getting the employment cards or ecard for the employees it would be very hard. And the key point is, he says his biz is very small operation, he can do it and manage on this own. The last sentence I think is the key highlight of this discussion.

1) Why was not he able to consider this or manage on his own in the past and now he can manage it well? Was it business is slower or lesser customers (my observation- I do not think business is reducing as more tenants are staying in this area since day 1, but the higher operating cost is killing his business or impacting his profitability, hence he thinks he can work mostly himself. At the time I was at his shop, he was packing the coconut shreds himself, which in past was done by his "workers".

2) Most employers tend to take foreign labours in thinking they were cheap, etc but now with increasing cost to employ them, it will good that the government can really exert better control on this aspect and prevent illegal labourers from coming in. At least we have a better control in every aspects related to our country's economy and social environment.

3) Hope with this, the employers would not have an opportunity to suppress to salary for locals, which in the past has been always suppressed because the local bosses have an option to take in the foreign labourers. Hopefully, this is an opportunity to correct what is wrong in our employment market. It is the time to make the proper adjustments and justice to our local Malaysians who have been hard hit by the extremely high cost of living  etc.