8,418 applications for illegals rehiring program

PUTRAJAYA: The Home Ministry has received 8,418 applications for the illegal immigrants Rehiring Programme for a period of four days from Febuary 15.

Its secretary-general Datuk Seri Alwi Ibrahim said these involved 8,100 applications for Indonesian nationals, Myanmar citizens (178) and other nationalities (140).

He said the implementation of the Rehiring Programme would be continued for illegals from the 15 existing source countries.

“The government wants to encourage employers in the country to use the opportunity to participate in the Rehiring Programme which started from February 15.

“This follows the government’s decision yesterday to suspend recruitment of all foreign workers from all source countries including Bangladesh,” he said in a statement here yesterday.

Alwi said the postponement to recruit all foreign workers is in force until the government was satisfied about the real needs for foreign workers as required by the industries in the country.

“The government also suspended the establishment of two categories of levy payments while providing ample opportunities to the local people to work in sectors dominated by foreign workers,” he said.

At the same time , Alwi said the ministry also directed the Immigration Department to improve enforcement action to ensure that all migrant workers in the country had documents and work permits.

Legal and enforcement actions are also taken against foreign workers involved in sectors that did not permit the employment of foreign workers.

He said the department began their operations yesterday with 2,125 foreigners inspected and, out of that total, 971 were arrested for various immigration offences.

Meanwhile he said the application for rehiring Programme by employers and immigrants can only be done online through the rehiring portal.imi.gov.my and detailed requirements of the programme can be downloaded from the same website. -