Govt to bring illegals home
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Manpower Theo L. Sambuaga said here yesterday that the government would help bring 12,000 illegal Indonesian workers home from Malaysia and 1,583 problematic workers from South Korea.
Illegal workers have become an increasing burden for the Malaysian government, with police said to be arresting as many as 200 illegal immigrants a day.
Theo said Indonesia would cooperate with the pending mass repatriation program.
"They will be repatriated gradually from Malacca to Dumai in Riau. This is a joint operation between Indonesia and Malaysia, because it costs money," Theo said after meeting with President Soeharto at his private residence on Jl. Cendana, Central Jakarta.
The minister said his department, in cooperation with other state agencies, had already brought home 665 of 1,583 workers in South Korea.
"They were legal workers, but they moved from one company to another," said Theo.
Riot
Meanwhile from Kuala Lumpur, fierce rioting was reported in the Semenyih detention camp in Selangor when Malaysian authorities there began to repatriate illegal Indonesian migrants being held in the center.
Eight Indonesians and one Malaysian policeman were reportedly killed in the riots, which erupted early yesterday.
"The policeman fell to the ground when he was hit on the shin by an iron rod. He was then killed by the Indonesians with sharp and blunt instruments," Abdul Rahim Noor, Malaysian inspector- general of police told reporters at the site of the riots in Semenyih, South of Kuala Lumpur.
He said 27 police personnel were injured, four of them seriously.
The police chief said three Indonesians died during the riot in the detention camp. One of them was shot dead when he attacked a police officer. The others died later.
"One died while being taken to the hospital, while another four died while being ferried to the Lumut naval base in the northern Perak state," he said, as quoted by AFP.
Similar riots occurred in Machap Umbo in Malacca, Juru in Penang and Lenggeng in Negeri Sembilan.
Police spokesman Ghazali Mohd Amin said disturbances erupted as police started simultaneous operations to move detainees from the Indonesian province of Aceh for a forced repatriation.
Some 500 Acehnese were taken from the four Malaysian camps in a pre-dawn operation and put on board a boat in Lumut, on the western coast of Malaysia pending deportation.
"They were very aggressive. They were using metal rods and sharp sticks," Ghazali said.
They resisted the repatriation saying that they would be persecuted for their separatist beliefs once they returned to Indonesia.
Indonesian officials have denied all such allegations.
Headache
The rising number of illegal Indonesian workers continues to be a headache and a burden for the Malaysian government.
A Penang state official said yesterday that 10 percent of tuberculosis cases treated in government hospitals last year involved foreign workers, mainly Indonesians and Bangladeshis.
Kuala Lumpur is afraid that numbers of illegal migrant workers could rise even further as Indonesia faces its worst economic hardship in three decades.
Millions of workers have lost their jobs since the crisis hit the country last July.
"Unemployed people number between 4.5 million and 4.8 million," said Theo yesterday.
However, Sri Harto, spokesman for the manpower ministry, gave a much higher figure. He said unemployment surged from 4.4 million last year to 8.7 million at the end of last month.
During a meeting with Soeharto in Jakarta two months ago, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad gave an assurance that his government would do its best to protect migrant Indonesian workers, despite Malaysia's own economic problems. (prb)