The government's controversial crackdown on hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants from poverty-hit Asian countries came under fire from rights activists as workers marked May Day yesterday.

Critics said the move to detain illegal workers showed contempt for labour rights and a weakness in the Malaysian economy that depends heavily on cheap foreign workers.

"The recent crackdown on hundreds of thousands of migrant labour exposed not only a callous regard for basic workers' rights and dignity but also a serious flaw in Malaysia's economic fundamentals," said local rights group Voice of the Malaysian People (Suaram).

The repatriation of some 400,000 illegal immigrants, mainly low-wage Indonesian workers, during a four-month amnesty that ended in March has left a yawning labour gap in Malaysia's agricultural, construction, manufacturing and services sectors.

Reform labour laws

Since the March 1 crackdown, some 6,500 illegal workers mainly from Indonesia, India and Burma have been detained nationwide, Mohamad Amirudin Mohamad Yusof, director of a 300,000-strong civilian security force told AFP .

"We are still conducting raids but they are on a smaller scale," he said.

Some of those detained have been deported, while others have been sentenced to jail terms and whipping.

"All these years of export-oriented industrialisation, the government has been only concerned with assuaging the terms of multinational companies for a weak labour movement and suppression of wage levels," Suaram director Kua Kia Soong said in a statement.

Urging Malaysian workers to stand in solidarity with migrant workers, Kua said workers of the world should unite to challenge the forces of global capitalism.

Malaysia is one of the largest importers of foreign labour in Asia. Foreign workers, both legal and illegal, number around 2.6 million of its 10.5 million workforce, officials say.

Kua said the labour situation in Malaysia was in dire straits and there was an urgent need to reform labour laws to allow workers to form national unions and to do away with bureaucratic supervision of union affairs.

"Today, there are fewer than 10 percent of Malaysia's 10 million workers who are unionised and many are organised in in-house unions and not in national unions," he said.

Few changes under Pak Lah

Top opposition lawmaker Lim Kit Siang of the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party told AFP that although workers were celebrating their second labour day under Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, not much had changed from the days of former premier Mahathir Mohamad.

"Unfortunately there seem to be no radical changes towards improvement of labour rights but instead they face more problems," including rising living costs, he said.

Urging workers to participate in national policies, he said they should not only be active in "rice bowl issues," otherwise they would be marginalised and face a bleak future.

Volker Turk, head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia, urged the government to address the labour crunch by absorbing some 50,000 refugees legally into the workforce.

"Some half-a-million people are needed to resolve the labour shortage. Absorb the refugees as it will not only solve a major humanitarian problem but will also protect them against abuse," he said.