Malaysian authorities have arrested 26 migrant workers including a Bangladeshi believed to be the leader of a syndicate providing illegal workers, an official said.

Immigration Department enforcement director Ishak Mohamed said the 28-year- old Bangladeshi was the syndicate leader while the other 25 foreigners - mainly Indonesians - were working as cleaners for an outsourcing company.

"Because of this, we are now launching an operation throughout the country to track this illegal outsourcing syndicate," he said.

"We want to take this opportunity to advise supermarkets to be careful when using outsourced services," he told reporters in Putrajaya.

Ishak said the illegals arrested were from neighbouring Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The immigration department was investigating whether the foreign-owned hypermarkets were aware of the illegal status of the contract workers, he said.

"We can charge them for harbouring illegal workers," Ishak said.

Burmese sought

He said authorities were looking for a man from Burma who was said to have supplied fake identity passes to the syndicate which were sold for some RM500 to RM600 (US$137 to US$164) each.

Ishak also said immigration procedures would soon be changed to minimise the problem of employers who fail to collect their newly arrived foreign workers.

Foreign workers who have not been received by their employers at airports within a specified time would be sent to a holding centre and eventually sent back to their home countries, he said.

Ishak said there were fewer than a hundred foreign workers stranded at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and not hundreds as had been reported recently.

Malaysia is one of Asia's largest importers of labour. Foreign workers, legal and illegal, number around 2.6 million of its workforce of 10.5 million.