KUALA LUMPUR: As the authorities step up their aggressive campaign to round up the more than two million illegals all over the country in a bid to better regulate the foreign workforce, they are slowly finding themselves in a bind.
They are beginning to see the same problems they encountered in 2004, when a massive operation to flush out 1.2 million undocumented workers resulted in a different set of headaches for them.
The nation’s 13 Immigration detention depots can hold no more than 50,000. And, at the rate the enforcers are picking them up, these centres will be filled to the brim long before they reach the numbers they are hoping to send home.
Insiders involved in the massive operation told the New Straits Times that one of the possible stumbling blocks in expediting the repatriation of these workers is that some governments of the source countries may not acknowledge the illegal workers as their citizens.
Deputy Home Minister Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed told the NST that the government would, if needed, engage these governments to facilitate the repatriation of illegal workers.
“We will ask for their help if there is a need for it, especially when we need them to verify the workers’ citizenship and issue them with travel papers for them to be deported.”
Meanwhile, Indonesian ambassador to Malaysia Herman Prayitno told the NST that Jakarta would do all it could to help with the repatriation of its citizens staying in the country illegally. Its embassy here, he added, would issue the necessary papers to its citizens for both the rehiring and repatriation exercises.
Nur Jazlan said the government would not scale back its operations in anticipation of logistical problems.
“We will look for alternatives to cope with the numbers and we will not stop until all the illegals are sent back to their respective countries.
“If we need to move them from state to state, we will. We also have our prisons. What is important for us now is to locate and detain all the illegal workers,” he said.
Nur Jazlan said keeping them for longer than necessary would not only pose a problem with overcrowding at the depots, but the country would also have to fork out more for their sustenance.
It is understood that it costs RM25 a day to feed each illegal immigrant detained at the depots.
The country spent no less than RM13 million in 2014 alone to repatriate illegals just from Sabah.
Between 2007 and 2009, the government spent RM30.2 million to repatriate 154,729 illegal immigrants.
The government will also pick up the tab for this round of repatriation. While illegal Indonesians are sent back via sea, others will be flown home.
“The government will bear the cost of sending them back. So, we do our best to keep them out.
“Even though the government will bear the cost of repatriating the illegals, it costs less than keeping them in depots for months,” he said, adding that most illegals without travel papers were Indonesians
who usually enter the country via boats.
The rest, he said, were mainly those who had entered the country via legal channels, only to have their papers expire.
Nur Jazlan said the government had yet to determine the exact number of illegal workers in the country, although it acknowledged that the number was massive.
He said the government was
hoping to determine the exact number of illegal foreign workers at the end of the rehiring programme, which would serve to legalise those who had overstayed.
Nur Jazlan said employers
harbouring illegal immigrants would not be treated with kid gloves as the authorities would hold
them liable for being part of the problem.