Hundreds of Malaysian employers waited for hours at immigration offices to register their foreign workers including many Indians, under the biometric registration programme ahead of the July 31 deadline.

The biometric registration of an estimated 1.8 million legal foreign workers, including Indians, is in progress and the registration of illegal foreign workers will commence on Aug 1. The offices can process 1,100 workers a day, from 8am to 10pm.

The registration is aimed at identifying legal foreign workers and those who have run away from their employers. The Malaysian government had earlier postponed an amnesty programme for illegal foreign workers that was slated to begin on July 11 to tighten measures to stem any abuse of this facility.

The government had said that two million legal foreign workers in this country would be registered and included in the biometric database before starting on a similar exercise for the illegal ones. Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said legal workers would be fingerprinted first to enable the authorities to monitor the amnesty.

The illegal foreign workers will be registered after the details of legal workers are put in the biometric database. On June 23, the Government announced a two-week legalisation and amnesty exercise, codenamed 6P, during which illegal foreign workers and their employers would be spared from legal action if they took part in the drive.

The 6P programme comprises registration, legalisation, amnesty, supervision, enforcement and deportation and was expected to take six months to complete.