The immigrants being rounded up at a premises along Jalan Siol Kanan, Kuching to verify their nationality and working permits.
KUCHING: Up to 49 Indonesian workers were detained by the state Immigration Department at four separate locations here in the wee hours of yesterday.
The state-wide operation dubbed ‘Ops Pati’ (Pendatang Asing Tanpa Izin) was carried out in most parts of Kuching, Sibu, Miri and Bintulu involving 130 personnel from the Immigration Department and Rela members.
Starting at 12am, checks were first carried out at Kampung Gersik where four men including two women were detained by the department to verify their working permits and travel documents.
Then at a living quarters near a clinic along Jalan Siol Kanan, 21 Indonesian men were detained while at the third location near Stadium Sarawak, 21 men were detained.
At a housing project along Jalan Bako, the fourth location that the team raided, only one man was detained as nine others managed to flee into the nearby secondary jungle.
According to state Immigration Department deputy director Hamfatullah Syawal Hamdan, the state-wide operation would be carried out for a period of three months starting yesterday.
“Checks will be conducted on all foreign nationals working in Sarawak to verify if they have committed an immigration offence,” he said to reporters.
Among the offences under which the immigrants can be detained are expired visas, expired working permits and working permits that do not tally with the company’s name the holder is working at.
In Sibu, police and Immigration Department officers yesterday arrested 44 men and six women suspected to be illegal immigrants.
Of those nabbed, 14 were believed to be of Bangladesh nationality, one Cambodian, and the rest Indonesians.
The raids, mounted by 18 police officers and 14 immigration officers, were conducted on two sawmills – one in Sungai Sadit and another in Teluk Bango.
They first stormed into the sawmill at Sungai Sadit at about 12.20am where the 50 workers were found to be without passports and working permits.
They then checked on 63 other foreign workers at the sawmill in Teluk Bango at 1.45am but found them to be legal workers.