Kuala Lumpur , August 17, 2006

We wish to register our strongest protest and regret against the statement made by Dato’s Tan Chai Hoe in Oriental Daily (August 17, 2006 page 2) those undocumented foreign workers is Malaysia second biggest public enemies.

The statement is grossly insensitive and criminalized the undocumented foreign workers whom had contributed to economic development of Malaysia.

Malaysia is foreign dependent nation. There are 5.07 million Malaysian active workers in the job market. 1.7 million Documented foreign workers account for about 25.1% of workers who contribute to the Malaysia economy.

In 2004, documented foreign workers pay RM 1.32 billion worth of levy to the Malaysia immigration department while Indonesian alone paid RM 766.5 million or 58.03 % of total levy contribution.

Malaysia authorities must also recognize the fact that the presences of the undocumented foreign workers are mainly due to the demand of the Malaysia employers who has many economic and bureaucratic reasons to hire the undocumented foreigners.

It is an open secret that exorbitant employment agents’ fees and the corrupted immigration department in Malaysia are main reasons that motivate the employers to employ the undocumented foreigners.

The Malaysia Anti Corruption unit has not been able to prosecute a single Immigration enforcement officer despite of 318,000 undocumented foreign workers deported in 2004.

The directors of the politically link companies in Damansara Damai and Damansara Perdana remain untouchable despite of worldwide coverage of undocumented workers crack down activities in Feb 2004. The undocumented workers were ready and willing to face the maximum penalty from Malaysian Authorities.

It is highly immoral for Dato’ Tan to criminalized the undocumented foreign workers as Malaysia No. 2 public enemies because majority of these workers are economic migrants who came to Malaysia to seek employment despite of low wages and bad working conditions.

The Criminalization of immigration procedures had jailed 33,580 foreigners in 2004; more than 95% of them were charged because of immigration offense and not criminal offense. But only handfuls of employers were charged.

In the 2004 mass force displacement exercise, 93,000 are construction workers, 83,000 are plantation workers, and 66,000 from the service industries, 40,000 from manufacturing sectors, and 34,000 are domestic workers and 17,000 others. There are at least 300,000 remain in the very remote part of Sabah and Sarawak in the palm oil plantation projects.

Most these undocumented foreign workers are engaged in the dirty, dangerous, demeaning and lowly paid jobs rejected by the Malaysian. It was these undocumented workers who worked faithfully in the palm oil plantation to bring Malaysia out from the financial crisis.

Across the board foreign workers helps to reduce the about 6.85% of the cost of production in the manufacturing sector which contributes about 58% of the Malaysia GDP

The undocumented foreign workers in the construction and manufacturing sectors had reduced the labor components cost for more than 12 to 15%. It also helps many local contractors to get job done at KLIA, Putrajaya, Petronas Twin towers, and many new housing estates in Malaysia.

Dato’s Tan Chai Ho had blindly accused the foreign workers communities as the No.2 public enemies without in-depth assessment of the entire corrupted recruitment system and the economical impact assessment of their contributions.

It is timely that Dato’ Tan Chai Ho stop criminalized the foreign workers’ image. He should provide constructive immigration policies under his portfolio that would lead to the harmonization of the industrial relation to support the vision 2020 goals through the direct and indirect contribution of foreign workers.

We do not think that Islam Hadhari administration would criminalized the human being who earn their living through their hard-work and sweat their blood for it.

Migrant Care

Alex Ong
Country Coordinator

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