PUTRAJAYA: Immigration Department director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali is disheartened by the low number of illegal foreign workers who have applied for the Enforcement card (E-card).
He said only 131,269 illegal foreign workers were brought by their employers to be registered with the Immigration Department to obtain their E-cards between Feb 15 and June 18.
"We issued 118,491 E-cards for the same period. The rest of the applications are either being processed right now or have been rejected.
"I am very disappointed by the low turnout, as we estimated (that there are) between 400,000 and 600,000 illegal foreign workers here in Malaysia," he told reporters today.
As a result, Mustafar vowed that the Immigration Department will come down hard on employers and their illegal foreign workers once the registration period ends at midnight on June 30.
He said operation hours to register illegal foreign workers will be extended to midnight on June 28, 29 and 30.
He said major operations will then be carried out to track down illegal foreign workers and their employers, adding that they will face the full brunt of the law.
A majority of illegal foreign workers who have received their E-cards are those in the construction sector (63,186), followed by the service industry (32,521), manufacturing (10,477), agriculture (6,591) and the plantation industry (5,716).