EXASPERATED by the poor response from illegal foreign workers and their employers to the government’s rehiring programme, the Immigration Department is pushing for errant employers to be caned, if they are caught and found guilty of harbouring and employing them.
Its director-general Datuk Sakib Kusmi said the poor response from the employers and their illegal foreign workers, even after the authorities had relaxed some rules and punishments that could be taken against them, had left the department with no choice but to push for the deterrent sentence.
The department believes that the errant employers were of the impression that they would, at the most, be compounded if caught employing illegal immigrants, and were more than willing to pay up rather than toe the line and get legal workers under their payroll.
Sakib also told the New Straits Times that in drawing up charges against errant employers, the department would push for courts to impose the caning sentence on them as a deterrent for the number of problems that they had contributed to the country by fuelling the demand for illegal foreign workers.
The Immigration Act 1959/63, which provides for caning those guilty of smuggling in immigrants, was amended in 2002 to include caning those guilty of employing or harbouring illegals Employers hirin harbouring them be charged under S tion 55B of the act, which provides for a jail term of between six months and five years, and a maximum fine of tween RM10,000 RM50,000 per employee, and up to six strokes of the rotan, if convicted.
Until today, no employer found guilty of harbouring undocumented foreigners had been caned.
Records of 2004,two years after the caning provision was introduced, showed that 18,607 illegals had been caned for entering the country without valid documents.
The same records showed that 112 cases of employers harbouring illegal immigrants had been brought to court.
None were caned.
Sakib, when asked why this was so, said he could not answer this.
He was, however, certain that the last time an employer was caned was in 1998 (before the act was amended) when he was found guilty of bringing in illegal workers.
Since the rehiring programme kicked off on Feb 15, only 3,700 employers and 13,000 illegal rants had come ard to be regisd.
There are some two million illegal foreigners working in the country.
Under the ongoing initiative d the country of aliens, the rehiring programme and operations to hunt down illegals and their employers are done in tandem.
Those who owned up to the government and are undergoing the legalisation process had basically escaped stiff punishments by heading straight for the amnesty line.
“The progress is slow.
We have given employers time but their response is not encouraging,” he said, adding that the department would also intensify raids, including integrated operations carried out with other enforcement agencies including police, the People’s Volunteer Corps and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.
He said while raids had, until recently, been only carried out during the day to give a head-start to employers in coming forward to do the right thing, they would now be conducted round the clock.
“We will increase the number of enforcers during our operations to tackle areas with huge numbers of illegal immigrants.” He made it clear that his men had been tasked with widening their “catch” to “aggressively” go after employers who failed to surrender their undocumented foreign workers and for harbouring them.
“This major nationwide crackdown will be similar to what we did in Cameron Highlands last year to flush out all the illegal workers.” He said employers harbouring illegal workers also risked action under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act (ATIPSOM) 2007.