The Malaysian government has postponed an amnesty programme for illegal foreign workers to stem any abuse of this facility. The programme was originally slated to begin on July 11.

As part of the programme, over two million legal foreign workers in the country would be registered and included in the biometric database before launching a similar exercise for illegal immigrants, said Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

Muhyiddin said that legal workers would be fingerprinted first to enable authorities to monitor the amnesty. "The Cabinet has decided to push back the timeline to register illegal foreign workers and concentrate on putting the legal ones into the biometric system first," he said.

"The employers will be tasked to come out and register their workers and details of this exercise, including its commencement date will be announced by the Home Ministry soon," he told reporters.

Muhyiddin said he had agreed to the ministry's request to register the existing pool of foreign workers, even though they have valid work permits, so that their movement, "especially from one work place to another", could be closely monitored.
On June 23, the government had announced a two-week legalisation and amnesty exercise - codenamed 6P - under which illegal foreign workers and their employers who cooperated would be spared from legal action.
The 6P programme, which includes registration, legalisation, amnesty, supervision, enforcement and deportation, is expected to take six months to complete.