Almost 10,000 Indonesian workers, this time equipped with proper documents and work orders, have returned to Sabah this month, an official said Saturday.

The figure was based on returning workers who left the small town of Nunukan in Indonesia's East Kalimantan province from September 1 to 12, said district labor and transmigration chief Hasan Basri.

"Their employers asked them to return and this time they are properly documented with work contracts and passports. Almost all of them are palm oil plantation workers," Basri told AFP from Nunukan, on the border of Sabah state on Borneo island

Living in tent cities

He said currently around 15,000 Indonesian workers, many living in tent cities, are still holed up in Nunukan.

Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians began returning home in late July ahead of tough new Malaysian immigration laws that threatened jail and caning for illegal workers.

The workers and their families are either awaiting passage home to other provinces or for a chance to return to Malaysia legally or illegally.

Bad sanitation and limited resources in the overcrowded town of Nunukan have already left at least 33 of the migrant workers or their family dead in the past few weeks.

Strained relations

President Megawati Sukarnoputri has been criticised for going to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg this month and continuing with a string of visits to several countries while the migrant worker problem continued.

The mass deportations and the tough punishments for those who stay have strained relations with Malaysia's neighbours.

But prosperous Malaysia remains a lure for many.

Some 8.4 million Indonesians are jobless, according to official figures this month. An estimated 30 million more have only part-time jobs. AFP