Malaysia to deport 110,000 illegal migrant workers

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)