KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 ― The government will study the possibility of implementing an RFID card for foreign workers in the country, Datuk Seri Ismail Mohamed Said told the Parliament today.

In his reply to a supplementary question by Datuk Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid, the deputy home minister I thanked the Pakatan Harapan’s Kapar MP for the suggestion.

"On the RFID card for foreign workers, we will study to see whether it can be implemented in our country. I would like to thank his honourable Kapar for his suggestion,” said Ismail.

Abdullah Sani had asked the minister if Putrajaya had any plans on implementing the RFID identity card which will contain the personal and professional data of the foreign workers, akin to other developed countries such as Singapore and Dubai.

Ismail had also told the Lower House that currently there are 2,766 foreign workers whose temporary work permits have ended but the Home Ministry has decided to grant them and their employees some leeway.

"We give the opportunity because of the movement control order and their employees have obtained a special permit for 30 days to allow these foreign workers a one-year extension on their temporary work permits.

"However, this is conditional on Fomema health checks and immigration procedures,” said Ismail, referring to the Foreign Workers' Medical Examination programme.

In 2014, Putrajaya had then introduced the i-Kad as an identification card for foreigners, to help authorities track undocumented migrants.

The i-Kad was issued based on the sector the foreign worker is in — differentiated by the colour of the card — namely expatriates (gold), agriculture (green), plantation (orange), construction (grey), services (yellow), manufacturing (red) and domestic helpers (brown).

It was equipped with advanced security features including the biometric and barcodes to facilitate inspections by the authorities

However, the Immigration Department had suspended the programme since July last year, citing "technical issues”.