“Foreigners who entered the country illegally or have stayed after the expiry of their work permits will be offered amnesty once the Home Ministry has updated the system to manage foreigners including the biometric identification system.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin chairing the Cabinet Committee Meeting on Foreign and Illegal workers at the Prime Minister's office in Putrajaya on Thursday. Present were Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok, Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr. S. Subramaniam and Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman. - Starpic by Rohaizat bin Md Darus.
“The biometric identification system is necessary to ensure that we record the entry of all foreign visitors and workers into the country and include work to update and coordinate all hardware, software and data managed by a number of different agencies and ministries.
“We will leave it to the Home Ministry, especially the Immigration Department, to implement it as soon as possible,” he told a press conference after chairing Cabinet Committee on Foreign and Illegal Workers meeting here Thursday.
It was also attended by representatives from 17 ministries and agencies, including Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail and Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan.
The amnesty programme was among 50 recommendations made to the cabinet committee by the Life Laboratory on the Issues of Foreign and Illegal Foreign Workers on ways to resolve various related issues.
This will be the third time the government offer amnesty to foreigners working illegally, mainly in plantations, construction sites, factories, restaurants and as domestic maids, after two previous ones in 2002 and 2004 that saw hundreds of thousands going home.
MTUC too had recently called on the government to make another amnesty offer after the one from July 2004 to February 2005 saw about 230,000 workers leaving the country voluntarily.
The trade union claimed many would take up such an offer as it would save them RM2,000, including a RM300 fine for overstaying, RM600 in airfare and RM1,100 for processing the application.
Muhyiddin said the government would also be looking into existing legislation as well as the possibility of introducing new regulations to help curb the problem of illegal foreign workers because it was important to ensure full enforcement once the amnesty period expired.
“After the amnesty offer expires, we will take action on all those who break the law by engaging or harbouring foreign workers without permits,” he said, adding that the government would not bear all costs to send the workers to their country of origin as employers are also expected to take advantage of the programme.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said each agency or ministry related to foreigners had their own system to monitor different aspects of foreigners in the country.
“The Tourism Ministry system for instance might focus only on holidaymakers coming here, the Education Ministry might focus just on foreign students and my ministry is more concerned with what these people are doing once here and if they are a threat to security.
“We could have gone for a totally new system for all the relevant ministries and agencies but it would be a waste to simply put aside the existing ones. So we chose to leverage the existing systems and integrate them for access to all,” he said.
Source: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/5/20/nation/20100520134256&sec=nation
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