The government has stopped issuing on-the-spot visas to tourists arriving from the south Indian city of Chennai after finding many are using the documents to overstay illegally.

"The cabinet has decided to freeze the visa on arrival as far as the flights from Chennai is concerned," said Home Affairs Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad.

"This means that tourists coming from those flights must get their visas there in Chennai before entering Malaysia," Radzi told reporters.

He said the freeze was effective Wednesday last week after the cabinet approved it.

Asked why the ban was only limited to flights from Chennai, Radzi said immigration data showed that most of those who overstayed were from that city.

The minister did not explain whether there would be a distinction made between Indian nationals and those from other countries arriving from Chennai.

Malaysia in September started issuing visas on arrival for tourists from 24 countries as part of a campaign to promote 2007 as "visit Malaysia year".

But in November the minister reportedly said all of the nearly 3,000 applicants from various countries had overstayed their one-month tourist visas and the authorities were having difficulties tracking them down.

Overstayers mostly women

Some two-thirds of the overstayers were from India, while most of the rest were from China, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

"They come here after one month and they don't go back... The number is alarming, especially from India and from China, where it is mostly the women," Radzi said Friday.

He said hunting down overstayers was difficult, since Indian and Chinese nationals looked like Malaysia's minority ethnic Chinese and Indian citizens.

The minister said authorities would track the situation for the next three months before deciding whether the visa programme would continue.

Radzi also announced that Malaysia would start issuing biometric identification cards with fingerprint records to foreign workers, expatriates and some 40,000 foreign students, to keep track of their movements.

The government since August has been trialing a biometric monitoring system to record the entry of Bangladeshi migrant workers, with the system to be fully implemented in early 2007.