Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
The amnesty was orginally due to expire Dec 31 but Malaysia last week extended
it for a month amid fears mass deportations would worsen the humanitarian crisis
in Indonesia and other countries hit by the Dec 26 earthquake and giant waves.
Abdullah, who met Wednesday with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
in Jakarta on the eve of an emergency meeting of world leaders to rally aid
for tsunami victims, said he had offered to extend the amnesty for a second
time if necessary.
“I told him that if it became again very necessary for us to delay some
more, then we will do that,” Abdullah said in an interview with BBC Asia
Today in Jakarta.
“Our priority is that we would like President Susilo and his government
to concentrate on rehabilitating Aceh and the Acehnese. There has to be a lot
of things done.”
Indonesians make up the bulk of more than a million illegal workers in Malaysia,
many of them from Aceh which bore the brunt of the tsunamis which had killed
more than 153,000 people in Asia, most of them in Indonesia, and left million
homeless.
Nationals from tsunami-hit India and Sri Lanka also work illegally in Malaysia,
drawn by jobs in the construction, plantation and service industries.
More than 300,000 migrants, including some 270,000 from Indonesia, had already
left Malaysia since the amnesty began October 29, immigration officials said.
Protecting the orphans
Abdullah also said he had reiterated to the Indonesian president his promise
to drum up support among the Organisation of Islamic Conferencenations to fund
a project to protect more than 30,000 children orphaned in the tsunami disaster.
He supported Indonesia’s move this week to ban the adoption of children in
Aceh amid fears they could be preyed on by human traffickers, he said.
Malaysia chairs the 57-member OIC and the 117-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
It will appeal to both organisations to contribute more to relief funds, Abdullah
said.
Malaysia, where 68 people were killed in the massive waves last month, has
already donated 5.3 million dollars to Indonesia’s tsunami fund.
Abdullah was due to visit Aceh later today before returning to Kuala Lumpur.
– AFP
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