The March 1 deadline for illegal immigrants to leave the country has been described as "insufficient time" by Indonesian parliamentarian Chaerul Anwar.

Chaerul ( left ) is in Malaysia with five other parliamentarians from Parti Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), on a fact-finding visit on working conditions affecting Indonesian workers.

"They just have two weeks left and there are about 300,000 Indonesian workers here. How can they all go back in such a short period?" he asked, when contacted today.

"We hope this will be settled properly. The illegal Indonesian migrant workers should go back and employers who have not paid wages should pay the workers as soon as possible."

He said both employers and workers should be given more time to respond to the situation.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday that Malaysia will crack down on Indonesian illegal immigrants from March 1 , after he held talks with visiting Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The deadline for the amnesty has been extended twice on the request of the Indonesian government.

Field visits

The PKS team, which arrived last Thursday, has been travelling around the country to visit Indonesian workers at construction sites, plantations and factories, and has also met with domestic workers.

"We went to about eight places in Johor, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur and talked with the workers about conditions they face," Chaerul said.

He said the team found that the majority do not have employment contracts and that their passports are frequently held by employers.

"They face problems whenever they meet enforcement officers as they can't produce any documents," he said.

He said some workers told him that the terms of the contracts they had signed while in Indonesia have since been varied.

"If they work overtime or work on public holidays, they do not get extra pay. Their position is very weak because most of them do not have knowledge of Malaysian laws. They do not know who to contact for help whenever they run into problems," he claimed.

Chaerul also took the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur to task for not adopting a "progressive approach" in acting on the plight of the workers.

"The workers complained that the embassy is not very responsive to their problems," he said.

The team will produce a report of its findings, to be revealed at a press conference in Jakarta later this week.

"We will talk about the problems of the workers. We hope both the Indonesian and Malaysian governments will work together to settle these," he added.