Illegal RI workers face KL fury<\/p>\n
By David Chew<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE (JP): It was a bright Monday morning. The young man
\nemerged from his house, playfully pinched the cheek of the child
\nhis wife was carrying, and roared off on his motorcycle to work
\nafter bidding her goodbye. A short distance away, a group of
\nlaughing children threw stones at a stray dog, which yelped and
\nbeat a hasty retreat with its tail between its legs. Oblivious to
\ntheir cruel game were some old men, puffing kretek cigarettes
\nwhile waiting to be served pisang goreng (fried banana) and
\nsteaming tea by an obliging vendor at their favorite roadside
\nwarung.<\/p>\n
The young man, boy and old men spoke Bahasa Indonesia. So did
\nother people around them. Yet this street scene, typified by
\nwooden shanties huddled together along narrow dusty streets, was
\nnot a village near Jakarta or anywhere else in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Kampung Pandan Dalam is in the state of Selangor, not far from
\nthe bustling Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur. It is an
\nillegal settlement where several Indonesian families, numbering
\nabout 1000 people, lived crammed in 80 squatter houses,
\nundetected for several years by the Malaysian authorities.<\/p>\n
Their presence was recently exposed in a front page story a
\nlocal daily, The Star, about Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Megat
\nJunid Megat Ayob lambasting local authorities for ignoring the
\nnumber of illegal Indonesian settlements in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
The publicity, accompanied by color pictures and graphics of
\nother illegal settlements in Selangor, spurred the authorities
\ninto action, particularly after the Selangor Chief Minister Tan
\nSri Muhammad Taib ordered all district offices to demolish the
\nillegal settlements after serving the residents eviction notices.<\/p>\n
On March 23, bulldozers moved into Kampung Pandan Dalam and
\nbegan leveling the wooden houses. Within six hours, the illegal
\nsettlement which took six years to build was reduced to heaps of
\nrubble and broken wood.<\/p>\n
Many of its residents are being temporarily housed in
\nmakeshift structures at an open garage near where their homes
\nused to stand, pending their deportation to Indonesia once they
\nare confirmed as illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n
The Kampung Pandan Dalam incident has highlighted the
\ncontentious issue of illegal Indonesian settlements proliferating
\nin Malaysia. No one knows the exact numbers, but every one knows
\nthat they will suffer the same fate as Kampung Pandan Dalam.<\/p>\n
Particularly after Dr. Mahathir Mohamad chided the local
\nauthorities for allowing the problem to reach such serious
\nproportions. No one wants to incur the prime minister's further
\nwrath. Rather than wait for another Kampung Pandan Dalam incident
\nto blow up in their faces, several other chief ministers issued
\ndirectives to flush out the illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n
The lure of higher wages in Malaysia has made many Indonesians
\nrisk boat trips across the Strait of Malacca, often under cover
\nof darkness from their homes in Sumatra, Java and Riau. Once they
\nlanded on various points in Malaysia's long coastline, they are
\nhurriedly taken by organized syndicates to work on the oil palm
\nplantations and construction sites which face a labor shortage.<\/p>\n
They preferred this surreptitious mode of entry into Malaysia
\nto the orderly but slow arrangements for Indonesian contract
\nworkers formulated by the Malaysian and Indonesian government.
\nThe gains of circumventing the cumbersome bureaucracies in both
\ncountries is offset by the exploitation of unscrupulous employers
\nwho pay meager wages and subject laborers to harsh working
\nconditions.<\/p>\n
Many illegal immigrants do not return home after their
\ncontract finishes, but work in Malaysia as hawkers and traders.
\nSome men marry locals, and others tie the knot with other illegal
\nimmigrants. Inevitably the illegal immigrants build homes to
\nsettle permanently in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Illegally clearing jungle land they bought from locals before
\nhelping each other build houses, settlements like Kampung Pandan
\nDalam, Kampung Malindo II, Kampung Sungei Lui, Kampung Sungei
\nMakau and Kampung Sungei Tekali sprouted and remained undetected
\nuntil the Star reported their presence.<\/p>\n
One reason they were able to keep a low profile was their
\nability to blend with the local Malay population since they spoke
\nthe same Malay language (but with a different accent) and
\nprofessed Islam. Some of them even claimed the same indigenous
\nstatus as the Malays.<\/p>\n
The illegal immigrants were left alone so long as they did not
\nthreaten the local people. Lately, however, some of them were
\ninvolved in a spate of armed robberies and served as hired
\nassassins for local killers. There were also others who spread
\ndeviant Islamic teachings which displeased the religious
\nauthorities. These threats possibly pressured the authorities to
\nact against the illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n
Pecuniary advantage led some Malays to help set up the illegal
\nsettlements. The various state governments are probing the
\nactivities of these recalcitrant locals and aim to try them when
\nthe necessary evidence is gathered.<\/p>\n
Many states sell farmland to Malays, and some locals resold
\nthis land to the illegal immigrants for handsome profits. Such
\ntransactions were often through \"middlemen\" who also got a cut of
\nthe profits. In many cases the illegal immigrants were misled
\ninto thinking their purchase of such land was genuine and they
\ncould do what they liked with it.<\/p>\n
It was only when they were caught by the authorities and told
\nthey did not possess state land that the illegal immigrants
\nrealize they had been swindled.<\/p>\n
Dr Mahathir has said his government's demolition of illegal
\nIndonesian settlements in Malaysia would not harm the present
\ncordial ties between the two countries. He made it clear that his
\ngovernment was cracking down on illegal settlements on state land
\nirrespective of whether they were foreign or local.<\/p>\n
No country anywhere could tolerate the existence of illegal
\nsettlement within its confines. If it did not do anything about
\nthe problem, the government would lose the confidence of the
\npeople. This was the essence of Dr Mahathir's message.<\/p>\n
The premier was responding to a question by the Indonesian
\nhost of a talk show \"Citra Nusantara\" on March 23, jointly hosted
\nby Indonesia's RCTI and Malaysia's TV3 commercial television
\nchannel. The Indonesian host questioned the necessity of the
\naction since the immigrants had all ready set up a colony and
\nwhat would happen to them after their houses were pulled down.<\/p>\n
The writer is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/illegal-ri-workers-face-kl-fury-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }