10,000 to take part in nationwide Ops Bersepadu

PETALING JAYA: The second phase of the nationwide crackdown on illegals is expected be more effective as it will cover a lot more industrial sectors as well as popular hideouts.

The operation that commences on Jan 21 is dubbed Ops 6P Bersepadu, and involves some 10,000 personnel from the police, Armed Forces, Rela (Volunteer Corp), Civil Defence, National Registration Department and local councils, with the Immigration Department as the lead agency.

Immigration director-general Datuk Alias Ahmad said the department would go all out in detaining illegal immigrants, and as such, employers must register their foreign workers by Jan 20.

Conceding that the run-up to the Jan 20 deadline for the Illegal Immigrant Special Registration Prog­ramme will be hectic as many employers will be clamouring to register their workers, Alias said the Home Ministry and the Immigration Department would be ready to accommodate them.

He stressed that there would be no opportunity for employers to regis­ter their workers once the opera­tion begins on Jan 21.

“We extended the deadline to Jan 20 as we want to give employers a last chance.

“There will be no more extension and we will be coming for the illegal workers,” said Alias, who explained the cost to deport the illegals would be borne by the workers themselves as the Government had spent millions in past years to detain and to deport them.

“Some RM16mil was spent for food at the detention centres, while RM3mil was spent to send them back last year.

“This time, the foreign workers will have to pay for their food and transport.

“If they have insufficient funds, then their respective embassies will have to cover the cost,” he said, adding that the average cost for food at the department’s detention centres was RM5 per day for each detainee.

“It is hard to know the exact number of illegals as some of them might have sneaked in or out of the country,” said Alias, who estimated that about 480,000 illegals were still in the country.

He revealed that some 17,180 foreigner­s and 223 employers were detained in the first phase of the operation that started on Sept 1 last year, with Indonesians making up the highest number of those nabbed, followed by Myanmar, Bang­ladesh and Nepal nationals.

Alias said about 1.3 million of the estimated two million undocumen­ted foreigners were registered durin­g the three-month 6P exercise that ended in October 2011.

 

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