Hundreds of OFWs in Malaysia to avail themselves of legalization

MANILA, Philippines – Hundreds of undocumented Filipinos working in Malaysia have expressed willingness to avail of the legalization program being offered by the Malaysian government.

The Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur told the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) that the embassy’s consular team has assisted hundreds of undocumented Filipino workers in availing of the amnesty program.

Other Filipinos were issued passports to enable them to qualify for legalization of their stay.

Most of the undocumented Filipinos are concentrated in Sabah. A DFA consular team led by Vice Consul Shirlene Mananquil was dispatched to Kota Kinabalu last Aug. 14 to assist the Filipinos there.

There were 390 applications for machine-readable passports (MRP) and 2,519 travel documents have been processed.

The DFA also issued travel documents to Filipinos who did not qualify for the legalization program and need to be repatriated.

Filipinos working in Malaysia earlier urged the DFA to facilitate the processing of their travel papers in order to legalize their stay.

Malaysian immigration is implementing Ops Bersepadu, which aims to legalize the stay of migrant workers with stable jobs in Malaysia and to deport foreigners found to have no regular employment.

The legalization aspect of the operation consisted of registration of migrant workers by their employers with Malaysian Immigration authorities and the issuance of passports to the migrants by their respective consular missions.