Malaysia has announced plans to create special courts to prosecute illegal immigrants.

Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said the public prosecutors will be posted to states such as Sabah and Sarawak which have large numbers of illegal immigration cases, to speed up prosecutions.

"The workload and paperwork for cases involving illegals and those who flout the immigration act can be quite heavy. So, we need specialised (prosecutors) to prosecute them in court," Najib was quoted saying by the state Bernama news agency.

Malaysia employs some 1.8 million foreign workers out of a 10.3 million workforce, mainly in the manufacturing, plantation and construction sectors and as maids, but thousands more are working illegally.

Amnesty programme

In a crackdown which started in late 2004, the government in an amnesty program repatriated thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly from Indonesia, a move which left industries critically short of labour.

Najib said some 363,000 illegal immigrants had been deported from Malaysia in the past five years to March this year, plus another 380,000 in the 2004 crackdown and 440,000 in a separate amnesty in 2002.