Malaysia gearing for biggest crackdown on illegal migrant workers

KATHMANDU: The Malaysian government is preparing for the biggest ever crackdown on around half million illegal migrant workers across the nation.

The crackdown will begun from Sunday and will be implemented by over one lakh 35 thousand security forces, Malaysian newspaper The Star reported.

The operation to be headed by the immigration officials will be backed by armed and unarmed security forces and will basically center in areas surrounding Kwalampur, Selengar, Penang and Johorbar among others.

Since the state has the capacity of detaining only 12 thousand illegal immigrant workers, preparations have been made to deport all illegal migrants instantly.

The initiative is part of the Malaysian government to legalize migrant workers in the country. Two years earlier it had started the Be Legal or Return Home program which colleced bio-metric data of all migrant workers in the country. Though many illegal migrant workers participated in it, most of them have not participated in it lately and updated their status.

Of the illegal migrant workers, most of them are Indonesians and rest of them are Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Burmese and Veitnamese the report said.

The crackdown will continue for the coming three months and officials said that they were hopeful to nail down every illegal migrant worker during this time frame.