PUTRAJAYA - MALAYSIA announced on Wednesday it has adopted a more stringent policy on recruitment of foreign workers, including Buddhist and Hindu priests, but insisted it has not banned Indian workers.

Home Affairs Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said a temporary freeze on the intake of Bangladeshi workers, introduced in October because of ill-treatment of such workers, remained in place.

'We have more than 2 million foreign workers, so we have to take action,' he said at a news conference called to deny news reports that the government has suspended recruitment of Indian workers.

'We don't want too many of them. Our target is to have about 1.8 million foreign workers but we have now overshot two million,' he said.

'Now we are more stringent,' he said, adding that firms would now be required to seek prior approval from the human resources ministry before they can apply to bring in foreign workers.

'We have to take some action to make sure there are not too many of them but at the same time we do not want to have our industries suffer because there are no workers,' Radzi said.

On foreign priests and temple musicians, Radzi said the government policy was to encourage temples to hire Malaysians.

'We have 5,468 temple priests and musicians. Our policy is we want local Indians to become priests here.

'If we feel they have been here too long, then we will not extend (the permits). But we are not saying we have totally stopped them from coming,' he said, adding that some priests from India have been in Malaysia for about 10 years. -- REUTERS