PUTRAJAYA must put a moratorium on the arrest and detention of refugees in Malaysia, said the Bar Council today.

The council’s Migrants, Refugee and Immigration Affairs Committee (MRIAC) chairman M. Ramachelvam said this in asking the government to stop its ongoing operation against illegal immigrants which started in July.  

“The amnesty programme that was carried out and ended on August 31 had flaws.

“The migrants couldn’t document themselves and there are the cost elements.

“There have been a lot of mismanagement on migrant labour and this was all done by the old government,” he said at the sidelines of the National Consultation on Comprehensive Policy Framework for Migrant Workers in Kuala Lumpur.

Immigration director-general Mustafar Ali was reported as saying there is no time limit to weed out illegal immigrants under Ops Mega 3.0 after the expiry of the deadline for the rehiring and relocation programme.

He said since the launch of the programme on July 1, a total of 3,134 operations were carried out with 40,395 foreigners being examined and of the total, 10,495 illegal immigrants were detained.

Ramachelvam said that the new government should review the policy and come out with a comprehensive amnesty programme that avoids the problems that existed in the previous programmes.

“There should be an amnesty programme which is time bound and makes it easy for those who are not documented to be documented.”

Ramachelvam said that as far as Malaysia is concerned, its borders should be secure and the government should document those already in the country.

“If we have a proper regulation method on amnesty then we would get all this illegal migrants to be documented.

“This will lead to national security and the borders will be secure.”

He also said documented workers will bring in revenue through the levies.

“Now, these undocumented migrants don’t pay levy and they are out of the system.

“We had 2 million migrant workers and now its 1.7 million.

“The government’s estimation is that for every two documented migrants there is one who is undocumented.

“So it’s imperative to come out with a comprehensive programme.” – October 17, 2018.