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.