Several Bangladeshis are among the 71 people detained in Malaysia during its largest nationwide crackdown on illegal migrants this week, the “Star” daily reports from Kuala Lumpur.
Those detained were mainly from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal, it said.
They did not have valid travel documents, or were found with fake work permits or had overstayed in the country, the report said.
Sixty of those detained are men and the rest are women. They were picked up in Bukit Raja, Klang and Dengkil.
Sunday’s raid targeted those who registered under the Illegal Immigrant Comprehensive Settlement Programme but did not go through further processing including legalisation and voluntary deportation.
During the three-month registration ending October 2011, around 1.3 million of the estimated two million undocumented expatriate workers had registered, it said.
Malaysia had deported 330,000 of those who registered while it processed 500,000 applications for legalisation.
Expatriate workers contribute much to Bangladesh’s economy by sending back enormous amount of remittances, that touched $ 14 billion last fiscal.
Bangladesh had recently inked a deal with Malaysia to send workers under government to government (G2G) agreement.
Several batches of workers had already been sent to the country under this arrangement but many still try to make it illegally.
A number of them are Rohingya refugees from Myanmar’s Arakan province who flee into Bangladesh to avoid persecution and then try reaching Malaysia in leaky boats to start a new life. – bdnews24.com
