Special Correspondent :
Panic has gripped the Bangladeshi community in Malaysia after the country launched a fresh crackdown to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.
The Malaysian Immigration Police has so far arrested over 800 undocumented Bangladeshi workers. Of them, 250 have been arrested in the latest crackdown begin on June 30 following the expiry of the country’s rehiring programme.
But it is not clear why the Bangladeshi undocumented workers did not avail of the rehiring scheme that the Malaysian government offered two years back for the illegal migrant workers.
It is alleged that the most of the undocumented Bangladeshi have paid their agents to avail of the facility. But many of them failed to take the opportunity as their agents cheated with them. Others failed to manage the cash.
One can’t understand what role Bangladesh Mission in Malaysia is playing to protect the ill-fated workers who sold assets or borrowed money to get a job in Malaysia. Reports galore that the mission officials are not serious to protect the workers. They are busy to make their own fortune.
Currently, an estimated eight lakh Bangladeshis are working in various sectors in Malaysia and of them, three lakh are undocumented.
“One of the reasons behind the expel the illegal migrants is that Malaysian authorities have to spend more than 25 million Malaysian Ringgit (MR) per year on meals for illegal immigrants detained at 13 Immigration Department depots nationwide. This is in addition to utility costs, security arrangement and depot maintenance costs,” Mustafar Ali, Director General of the Department of Malaysian Immigration told a local news portal Free Malaysia Today yesterday.
On June 30, Mustafar said 155,680 irregular migrants working for 26,957 employers had applied for the regularisation, and 140,746 were regularised.
However, it was only 23 percent of the 600,000 cards targeted (to be given to regular workers permit) by the Immigration Department, reported Malaysian state news agency, Bernama.
Most applicants were from Bangladesh, followed Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal, Mustafar said.
Mustafar also expressed disappointment with the attitude of employers over the issue.
He said after the deadline, the department would arrest undocumented migrants and prosecute their employers, including those employing immigrants with student passes, under the Immigration Act 1959/1963.
“We have nothing to do for them when they failed to avail the amnesty of the Malaysian government,” Namita Halder, Secretary of the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment told The New Nation yesterday.
She said the Malaysian government launched the rehiring programme two years back creating the opportunity for the Bangladeshi undocumented Bangladeshi workers to become legal. What can we do when they missed the chance?
While talking to The New Nation over phone, Bangladeshis living in the Malaysian capital said law enforcers already raided Kota Raya, an area frequented by foreign workers, and detained many migrants, including Bangladeshis.
The raid began in the early hours, amid widespread fears of arrests and deportations among thousands of irregular migrants. Many of them had paid agents hefty sums for legalisation under the rehiring programme, but were fooled instead.
The crackdown on illegal migrants has begun after the new Malaysian government, which came to power in May, announced that it wants to reduce dependence on foreign labour as well as check corruption in the foreign labour recruitment system.
The previous Malaysian government had given licences to three companies through which undocumented foreign workers could be registered for regularisation. As per regulations, the employers were supposed to renew the work permit of their workers.
However, rights activists in Malaysia criticised the crackdown saying many of the foreign workers in Malaysia have been facing difficult times and became undocumented because of the abuses by the employers, labour agents and brokers. “Even the rehiring programme, which began in early 2016, has not been transparent as it involved brokers and sub-agents in the regularisation process,” said Adrian Pereira, executive director of North South Initiative, a rights body in Malaysia.
Adrian said the Malaysian government should give the migrants adequate time and put in place a transparent system for their regularisation.
