JAKARTA (AFP) - Malaysia's decision to halve its intake of Indonesian workers will worsen Jakarta's already acute unemployment crisis, an expert said today.

Malaysian officials announced yesterday plans to gradually reduce the number of legal Indonesian workers from 900,000 to around 450,000 to prevent a repeat of recent riots.

"We are already facing a super-employment crisis and this will only add to the pressure that may lead to the explosion of a social timebomb at home," Bomer Pasaribu, the director of the Center for Labor and Development Studies and a former manpower minister, told AFP .

"If we are talking of unemployment, underemployment and new workforce entering the market, last year we had some 31 million people in those categories," Pasaribu said.

"This year, I estimate that 41 million of our workforce of some 102 million people, or 40.2 percent, will be in that category."

Pasaribu said the government was only dealing with labour issues on a case by case basis.

Orderly process

He said the government should institute an orderly process for selecting and sending workers abroad and improve cooperation with host countries. It could "learn a lot" from the way the Philippines manages its workers abroad.

Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians also work in the Middle East.

Pasaribu said that in the case of Malaysia, the government should observe "a cooling down period" before embarking on diplomatic lobbying.

"Even though we deplore it, we also have to understand the move," he added.

Indonesia and Malaysia should have a sound agreement on labour involving the government, entrepreneurs and labour representatives from both countries.

Pasaribu said Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur should also address the "mafias" in each country which handle the inflow of illegal workers into Malaysia. He said these number about the same as, if not more than, the legal number.

Malaysia had earlier announced a temporary ban on hiring new Indonesian workers.

The top official in Malaysia's Home Ministry, Aseh Che Mat, also said that Indonesians currently working in Malaysia would be replaced with people from other countries when their contracts expire.

Cheap labour

Some 400 Indonesians rioted at a textile factory on Jan 17 after police tried to detain 16 of their co-workers for drug abuse. Police vehicles were overturned and officers stoned.

Three days later about 70 Indonesian construction workers armed with machetes went on the rampage and damaged food stalls run by fellow Indonesians at Cyberjaya south of Kuala Lumpur.

Indonesian ministers have apologised for the riots.

But Manpower Minister Jacob Nuwa Wea said yesterday that Malaysia's action would only swell the number of illegal immigrants and called for talks between the two governments.

Many Malaysian industries wanted cheap labour from Indonesia, he said, and some businessmen preferred illegal workers because they could pay them less and exercise more pressure on them.

Dozens of people are waiting in Dumai on Sumatra island to cross the Malacca Strait to Malaysia, the state Antara news agency reported today.

"We are only trying to seek to work there, nothing more than that," it quoted Sarjan, 29, as saying. He had been in Dumai along with 53 other people for the past 27 days awaiting passage.

Sarjan said he had been promised work by a labor broker in Malaysia who would also arrange his crossing but declined to name the man.