Op Benteng now focuses on chasing off illegals at borders – Ismail

KUALA LUMPUR: Op Benteng is now focusing on chasing off illegal immigrants at the country’s borders compared to arrests, said Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

He said the authorities adopted the approach seeing that among the causes of the hike in Covid-19 cases in the country especially on the east coast of Sabah was due to Covid-19 positive detainees infecting other detainees.

‘’We know one of the causes in the increase in Covid-19 cases in the country especially on the east coast of Sabah is when illegals are detained and placed in detention centres. They will eventually infect the detainees at the detention centres before the viruses spread out of the centres.

‘’So, now under Op Benteng, we will chase them away before they enter our national borders. We will only detain them after they have breached our borders or at road blocks,’’ he told a media conference on the development of Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) at Wisma Pertahanan, here, yesterday.

He said, through Op Benteng, 27 illegal immigrants were detained and eight vehicles seized on Friday.

Ismail Sabri said the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) detained 585 individuals for flouting the RMCO and of the total, 569 were compounded, 13 remanded while three more were bailed, on Friday.

He said that among the offences included not wearing masks (224), failure to comply with physical distancing (199) and not providing personal details recording items (96).

Meanwhile, he said from July 24 until yesterday, 53,659 individuals returned to Malaysia via the international border gates, and of the total, 8,378 were undergoing mandatory quarantine.

Meanwhile, Ismail Sabri said an inspection by the Malaysian Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) found that 86 out of 131 construction sites complied with the standard operation procedure (SOP). - Bernama