Indonesian Illegal Workers Rushing out of Malaysia
By
Kazi Mahmood, IOL South East Asia Correspondent
KUALA
LUMPUR, July 30 (IslamOnline) - Thousands of illegal Indonesian
workers are rushing to beat an amnesty deadline ending on Thursday,
August 1, 2002, in Malaysia. They head for their home states in
Indonesia, news sources reported Tuesday, July 30, 2002.
At
least 5,000 Indonesian illegal immigrants were being sent home from
the “Stulang Laut” ferry terminal in Johor state daily until
Thursday, immigration officers said to the press.
Since
Sunday, the Johor Immigration Department has managed to increase trips
to Tanjung Pinang and Batam by getting operators to use bigger
capacity ferries to ply the Johor Baru-Indonesia route, the Straits
Times of Singapore said.
However
to many of these Indonesian workers, life on the other side of the sea
is as unwelcoming as troubled, IslamOnline was told.
Several
provinces in Riau and Sumatra are gearing up for trouble with the
influx of workers returning home, mostly without any shelter or
savings to survive in their own country.
Singapore’s
Straits Times newspaper reporting from Indonesia says the urban
centres of Batam, Java and Sumatra will be swamped by at least 100,000
workers returning from Malaysia this week - and they won't be welcome.
In
Malaysia, most of them live in wooden long houses in discreet areas.
In recent months, Malaysia engaged its enforcement officers
accompanied at times by police or the military itself to destroy those
illegal settlements.
The
country says it has enormous social problems of its own to tolerate
illegal immigrants who have started to cause more security trouble to
Malaysia.
Construction
sites welcomed the illegal workers in particular, to respond to
growing needs for cheap labor, bypassing immigration strict rules and
saving on other administrative costs.
Meanwhile,
the Johor Baru Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry warned that
the huge outflow of Indonesians could cripple the construction sector
local and international papers said.
Its
secretary-general Ng Yeow Song said, based on feedback from industry
key players; some 180,000 Indonesians were estimated to be working
illegally in the construction sector in Malaysia.
He
proposed that the Malaysian government legalize the existing workers
under a regulated framework, taking into consideration clean records
and work performances.
Other
reports says Malaysian construction firms, plantations and other
companies are scrambling for replacement workers as more than 400,000
illegal foreign workers rush to leave the country.
Officials
estimated that there were at least 600,000 illegal foreign workers in
the country, the vast majority of them Indonesian.
More
than 230,000 of them, mainly Indonesians working in the construction
industry, have been deported in the four months since an amnesty was
first announced.
Under
new immigration laws employers of illegals also face severe
punishment, that now includes mandatory caning and stiff fines.
'We
are working towards July 31 as the deadline,' said Foreign Labor
Division director Jamel Arifin in an interview to Straits Times. 'We
have not received any instruction to extend the amnesty period.'
The
government said the country should stop its over-reliance on
Indonesian workers, following a series of complaints that they were
causing social problems.
These
included a riot in Nilai, Negri Sembilan, earlier this year, during
which workers set fire to buildings and overturned police cars. Fights
between Indonesian gangs had also become common.
Already
beset by problems coping with migrating workers from other parts of
Indonesia, several Indonesian provinces will be hard pressed to cater
to a whole new batch and officials are already fearing massive social
unrest, the Singapore newspaper pointed out on Tuesday.
Provincial
officials in Sumatra have even threatened not to allow ships ferrying
these workers to dock.
They
also complained of Jakarta's lack of help and funding in anticipating
the influx of illegal workers to be deported by the Malaysian
government, citing they were already saddled with various social
problems.
Jakarta
has said that it would deploy several Navy ships to transport the
workers back to their respective homes, but so far only two ships had
been deployed to carry some of the workers from East Kalimantan back
to Sulawesi.
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