Prisons are overcrowded after a crackdown on illegal immigrants, adding to a growing list of problems caused by the anti-migrant sweep.

Prisons Department official Zamzuri Ghani told the Malay Mail the nation's 52 prisons and detention centres were built to house 30,000 inmates but were holding 45,000 people, most of them illegal migrants.

The revelation came hard on the heels of an announcement that a government scheme to bring expelled Indonesian workers back into the country to fill a large labour shortage had been abandoned.

Home Affairs Minister Azmi Khalid said 11 one-stop centres to facilitate the return of the workers were shut down because of a poor response.

The centres, manned by immigration officers from both countries, were set up at Indonesian border points after 400,000 illegal immigrants - mainly Indonesians - left Malaysia during an amnesty which ended on Feb 28.

Labour crunch may hasten slowdown

The repatriation and the arrest of those who did not leave voluntarily created a serious labour shortage in Malaysia's agricultural, construction, manufacturing and services sectors.

The government hoped the problem would be solved by the scheme to bring the workers back legally, but Azmi said he believed bureaucracy, high fees imposed by the Indonesian government and delays in processing documents were keeping the Indonesians away.

The labour shortage has led to industry losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars and sparked fears it may exacerbate a slowdown in economic growth, which is seen at 5.0-6.0 percent this year, down from 7.1 percent in

The departure of the illegal immigrants caused a shortage of some 200,000 workers in the manufacturing sector, 150,000 in construction, 50,000 in plantations and 20,000 in the services sector, the cabinet has been told.

The government is now looking for workers from other countries, including Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar and Vietnam.

More than a thousand Pakistanis have already arrived in Malaysia out of an expected 100,000.