Jakarta – Indonesia criticised neighbouring Malaysia on Monday for Kuala Lumpur's decision to halve the number of Indonesians working in the country and said the move could backfire and spark an influx of illegal workers.
Manpower Minister Jacob Nuwa Wea said Indonesians who wanted to work in Malaysia in future would be more likely to enter the country illegally rather than go through official channels.
"This decision is unfair, because only some out of hundreds of thousands of people did the mistakes. So it's unfair to send many people home," Nuwa Wea told reporters during a break in parliament.
"The Malaysian government should remember that reducing or banning foreign workers can create more problems, such as more illegal workers ... it will be more difficult to control," he added.
On Sunday, Malaysia Home Ministry Secretary-General Aseh Che Mat said Kuala Lumpur planned to halve the number of Indonesian workers after violent clashes between them and police.
Che Mat was quoted by the official Bernama news agency as saying there were 900,000 registered Indonesian workers in Malaysia. Most are employed in the construction, manufacturing and plantation sectors and many also work as housemaids.
Jakarta earns about $500 million annually from the remittances of millions of overseas workers so any clampdown is a worrying issue for Indonesia, where the government has predicted unemployment would increase to around 40 million this year from around 36 million in 2001.
Last week, hundreds of Indonesian workers from a textile factory attacked police when officers tried to detain colleagues suspected of taking drugs. Fifteen workers alleged to have participated in the riots will appear in court on Tuesday, newspapers reported.
The decision to charge the men reflects a new tough stand against foreign workers by Kuala Lumpur, which has in the past deported them without pressing charges.
The factory riot came just over a month after more than 1,600 illegal Indonesian immigrants rioted at a detention camp in southern Johor state and burned down some of their quarters.
Malaysia is home to more than a million foreign workers, most of them from poorer neighbours Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines.