Illegal immigrants should be caned and deported so that tough new laws do not put more pressure on already crowded jails, a deputy minister said in remarks published Friday.

"In my opinion, it is useless to detain them for long. What is important is to cane them and deport them. We are also afraid the prisons cannot accommodate all of them," Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung told the Malay-language Berita Harian .

The paper quoted a government source as saying all 22 jails in the country were already well over capacity.

"Right now, there are about 29,000 criminals held in jails throughout the country when capacity at these prisons is about 23,000.

"With the increase in the number of illegal immigrants detained, the overcrowding problem will greatly worsen," the source said.

Chor said the problem would be alleviated in 2004 when four or five new detention centres were expected to be completed.

Under harsh new immigration laws illegal workers and their employers face a mandatory six months in jail and possibly up to six strokes of the cane.

The implementation of the new laws followed the July 31 expiry of an amnesty period which saw the mass exodus of more than 300,000 illegal migrants, and dozens who remained in the country have already been sentenced. AFP