Malaysia to deport 110,000 illegal migrant workers

JAKARTA (JP): Malaysian authorities will gradually deport a total of 110,000 Indonesian workers illegally working in the country in the coming months.

Vivi Aryanti Pancaweda, director of labor protection at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, said on Friday that the workers currently in detention camps in Malaysia would be deported in phases.

"Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to share the cost of the deportation and Tjepy F. Aloewi, director general of labor placement at the ministry, is leaving for Kuala Lumpur to ascertain how the illegal workers will be repatriated," she told The Jakarta Post by telephone.

Around 2,500 people were returned to Indonesia last week, in the first phase of deportation, on Indonesian ferries via the Belawan seaport in North Sumatra. The second phase would be conducted before the Idul Fitri holiday and the third phase in January.

"Those illegal migrant workers to be deported before the Idul Fitri holiday will be transported by several Navy's warships," she said.

An estimated 600,000 Indonesians work in numerous sectors in Malaysia of which close to half of them are believed to have entered the country illegally.

Sanctions

Separately, Tjepy said the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration would make a list of violations committed by labor exporters this year before imposing sanctions on them.

"More than 200 labor export companies have been found guilty of ignoring the more than 650 troubled workers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi and several other companies have extorted workers whom they had sent to Taiwan," he said.

He warned that all violations would be noted and companies with major violations would no longer be allowed to operate.

"The revocation of licenses is the maximum penalty permitted by the 1999 ministerial decree on labor export," he said, adding that so far, the government had never imposed the maximum penalty on companies committing violations.

This year Indonesia exported a total of 376,451 workers to eight countries and recorded a total remittance of Rp 9.4 trillion (US$990 million).

The workers' were sent to Malaysia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. (rms)