This comes after home minister Hamzah Zainudin said enforcement agencies would conduct operations during the full lockdown to detain undocumented foreign workers.
People’s Health Forum public health policy researcher Dr Lim Chee Han said the 83 NGOs and prominent individuals who signed the petition viewed the current approach of arresting and detaining undocumented migrants as counterproductive.
“Such operations will intimidate foreign workers, regardless of whether they are documented or undocumented, and force them into hiding,” he said at a virtual press conference organised by the forum today.
This would defeat the government’s efforts to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19, he said, adding that herd immunity required the vaccination of 80% of the population, including the migrant community.
Failure to reach the vaccination level of 80% would delay the country’s economic recovery and prolong the people’s suffering, he said.
Lim also said the operations against undocumented migrants would create new Covid-19 clusters at immigration detention centres, with the possibility of spreading the virus to immigration officers and their family members, and even further to police and court staff involved in remand control.
“The immigration department does not have the capacity to arrest and repatriate the two to three million undocumented migrants who are in Malaysia,” he said.
He noted that more than 95% of the undocumented migrants in Malaysia work and contribute to the national economy.
“We hope the prime minister will bring this issue to the National Security Council meeting so that a more appropriate and integrated approach can be formulated for handling undocumented migrants when Covid-19 is spreading.
“At this point in time, we should focus on the goal of controlling the spread of Covid-19 in our country,” he said.
Among those who signed the petition were Citizens’ Health Initiative, Agora Society Malaysia, Third World Network, Health Equity Initiatives and Parti Sosialis Malaysia.
A total of 156 immigrants were detained at an illegal settlement in Cyberjaya in an integrated operation led by the immigration department on Sunday.
Immigration director-general Khairul Dzaimee Daud had said that the illegal settlement had the potential to spread Covid-19 infections because its residents did not comply with stipulated SOPs under the movement control order.