Philippine workers head home as team checks camps
Philippine workers head home as team checks camps
Jalil Hamid Reuters Sandakan, East Malaysia
Mothers with babies and men laden with bags crowded onto a Philippine navy ship on Tuesday as a Philippine team investigated reports several infants had died in Malaysian camps for illegal workers.
Hundreds of illegal workers from the Philippines prepared to sail for home from Malaysia's Sandakan port on the northeast coast of Borneo island, the latest of tens of thousands of Filipinos to leave Malaysia since the launch of a crackdown.
Relations between Malaysia and its neighbors the Philippines and Indonesia have soured since Kuala Lumpur's policy of caning illegal workers became law on Aug.1, spurring the exodus as well as reports of hardship.
A Philippine team led by a presidential adviser criss-crossed the Malaysian state looking at conditions in detention camps where Manila officials say three Filipino children have died from malnutrition and dehydration.
The delegation met Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Kuala Lumpur and Sabah Chief Minister Chong Kah Kiat in the state capital Kota Kinabalu.
"What they told us officially is, if there are abuses committed by their people, provided we can identify (them), they are going to punish them," the team's leader, presidential adviser for Philippine Muslims, Nur Jaafar, told reporters.
But he said it was important not to dwell on problems but instead find ways of improving the lot of those being sent home. "We have to adopt a system to improve the deportation process. It's no use to cry over spilt milk."
Demonstrators in Manila and Jakarta have denounced Malaysia and burnt its flags in recent days although the Philippine and Indonesian governments have played down the row.
On Sandakan dock Filipina housewife Annabel Galeo, 34, prepared to board the PRB Bacolod City with two toddlers in tow. "I want to go home because I want to apply for a new passport. Then I want to come back," she said.
The ship cast off for the southern Philippines Tawitawi island group late on Tuesday.
About 60,000 Filipino refugees fled fighting in the southern Philippines in the 1970s and many of them settled down, marrying into the community. Over the years many more have followed.
Sabah politicians gave many of the migrants real or fake identification cards to boost their vote, while the newcomers did the poorly paid jobs shunned by locals in forestry, oil palm plantations and farming.
About 70,000 of the estimated half a million Philippine citizens in Malaysia have gone home since February.
Meanwhile, the Philippines said on Tuesday it was looking into a newspaper report that Malaysian police had sexually abused some Filipino Christian women detained on Sabah island.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer said on Tuesday the incidents in Tawau were reported by two Filipinos it interviewed after they were expelled from Malaysia recently in the wake of that country's crackdown on illegal immigrants.