STIFFER PENALTY FOR OFFENDERS

Employers found hiring, harbouring illegal workers may be caned

HEAVIER punishment, including caning, awaits employers who hire or give refuge to illegal foreign workers. Immigration Department director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali said he recently met Chief Justice Tun Md Raus Sharif to discuss the punishment to be meted out to employers who commit immigration offences.

“I’ve discussed (the judicial issues) with the chief justice, and he expressed his readiness (to mete out) the punishment, including caning, to employers who are (employing illegals as workers),” he said after leading a team of 39 officers and department personnel on an operation to detain illegal foreigners at two construction sites here and in Kamunting. The operation, which began on Monday, ended yesterday.

Mustafar said his department would punish employers who protected illegal foreign workers by freezing their company assets.

As of 11.30pm on Monday, he said, 11,500 illegal foreign workers and 272 employers had been detained as part of an operation conducted since the Enforcement-card programme ended on June 30.

The Monday operation saw 139 foreign workers checked and 45 detained for not having valid travel documents or misusing their employee passes.

“Thirty-nine men, six women and two children, aged between 1 month and 3 years, were taken to the Ipoh Immigration Department for documentation, before being sent to the Langkap Immigration Depot for investigations.”

Mustafar urged employers and local authorities to monitor the construction of “rumah kongsi” here as they were unsafe.