SEPANG: The congestion involving foreign workers arriving at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) days before the latest deadline to bring them into the country was mainly due to employers’ delay in picking them up, say Labour Department officials.
Both Terminals 1 and 2 of the airport had witnessed thousands of foreign workers, especially those from Bangladesh, crowding there days before the May 31 deadline.
Yesterday, officials of the department under the Human Resources Ministry could be seen assisting the workers and recording their arrivals before they boarded buses to head for their destinations.
“The problem is that some employers did not come on time to collect the workers they had hired, leaving the foreigners stranded and, in some cases, having to spend the night at the airport,” said one of the officials who requested anonymity.
He added that a significant number of Bangladeshi workers were still in the immigration holding area waiting for their employers to arrive.
“Immigration will only release the workers when their employer comes to claim them.
“If not, these workers might face the possibility of being deported,” he said.
When The Star visited KLIA yesterday, the situation had eased considerably.
Just a day before, both terminals were crowded with groups of newly-arrived migrant workers, with some having to sit on the floor as they awaited the processing of their documents by Immigration and collection by their employers.
Hamidul, a Bangladeshi worker who preferred to be identified only by his first name, said: “We arrived at nine this morning (yesterday), and are now waiting for our boss to arrange for transportation to fetch us.”
It is understood that the language barrier had complicated matters as not many of the Bangladeshi workers spoke Malay; only a handful could communicate in simple Malay.
Previously, Immigration Department director-general Ruslin Jusoh had said such arrivals that averaged between 500 and 1,000 daily ballooned to about 2,500 on May 22, and between 4,000 and 4,500 on May 27.
According to the Bangladeshi news portal Kaler Kantho, the Bangladesh Manpower Employment and Training Bureau had stopped issuing travel approvals on May 21.
However, additional clearances were given to 1,112 workers after this date, resulting in only about 1,500 of the approved workers being able to travel to Malaysia by the deadline day, leaving 31,701 workers still in Bangladesh with cancelled plans.
KLIA is said to have faced congestion challenges in recent days with nearly 20,000 workers from 14 countries arriving, among them some 5,000 from Bangladesh.
