TWENTY foreigners, three of them women, have been picked up in Sarawak’s latest drive to weed out those who have entered the state illegally and are a possible source of transmission of the deadly Covid-19 virus.

The Sarawak disaster management committee (SDMC) initiated drive, codenamed Ops Jala, raided eight construction sites in and around Kuching on Wednesday and yesterday, its first two days, to screen foreign workers for legal and health papers.

The majority of them are Indonesian nationals who managed to give security personnel patrolling the border under Ops Benteng the slip.

The disaster committee had long said the state’s fight against the pandemic has been undermined by illegal immigrants with suspect health statuses sneaking across the porous Sarawak-Kalimantan border to find readily available jobs in the worker-starved construction sector.

Many take the chance hoping to take advantage of a policy that potentially allows them to be made “legal” if they pass a pre-employment mandatory Covid-19 test and their employers register them.

The test requirement is a mandatory part of the current standard operating procedure (SOP) in the employment of foreign workers.

The cost will have to be borne by their employers.

Sarawak security council director, Chai Khin Chung said at a media conference today that over 500 workers were screened in the integrated two-day raid involving the police, army, the Immigration and Health departments, the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and officers from the state security council.

Chai said the 20 did not have any valid travel documents and work permits.

They have been sent to a quarantine centre for screening before further legal processes could be taken against them.

All the Indonesians were detained and have been quarantined under Act 342 of the Prevention of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 to determine their health status,” Chai said.

The ease with which four Indonesian nationals managed to escape back to their hometown in Kalimantan after testing positive for Covid-19 last month highlighted the disaster management committee’s fears.

They managed to take a bus from Sibu to the Sarawak border town of Lubok Antu – 118km away.

From Lubok Antu, they slipped back home.

Chai said one of the state’s strategies in the current drive is to get private clinics, labs and hospitals – places where employers normally send these workers for testing – on board as strategic partners.

He also said the state government has not given the security council any time frame within which it will stop the operation. – January 22, 2021.