The Foreign Workers Bill will be tabled in Parliament in the first quarter of next year, in a bid to control the influx of illegal migrant workers.

Deputy Home Minister Tan Chai Ho told the Dewan Rakyat during question time that this is among measures to manage related issues more effectively.

He was replying to a supplementary question from Morkiman Kobiran (BN-Hulu Langat) who asked if the government intends to introduce a new law to prevent the influx of foreigners.

"Even though our immigration laws are tight, we still see many foreigners entering the country to work here. Employers seem to hire them without working permits. Does the ministry plan to introduce a new law to solve this problem?" asked Markiman.

He also wanted to information on how the ministry deals with employers who prefer foreign to local workers.

Tan said foreign workers without work permits are usually deported to their countries after being charged in a special court located in all immigration detention depots.

"Furthermore, immigration officials and Rela often conduct operations at factories and business premises to check on employers who hire illegal immigrants," he said.

To a question from Lau Yeng Peng (BN-Puchong), Tan said the ministry has implemented the biometric system which enables the documentation of thumb-print of every foreign worker who is deported.

"We can prevent the same person from entering the country because from our records we know that he has been charged (in court) in the past," said Tan.

Explaining that this is an effective system, he said the Foreign Workers Bill would be a better mechanism to control both workers and employers.

He reiterated that, although locals have priority over foreigners for jobs, the former do not want to work in certain sectors.

"Employers have to go through the Human Resource Department before employing a foreign worker. The application will only be approved if they can prove that they have failed to get a local to work with them. This means priority is given to the locals, but they do not want to work."

He further said there are 192,200 foreign workers in the service sector, which has 14 sub-sectors.

"In the restaurants sub-sector, Indian nationals make up the highest number at 15, 728, followed by Thai (10,649) and Indonesians (5,975)," said Tan.

"Indonesians are preferred in the domestic-helper sub-sector with 299,214 of them employed, followed by Filipinos (10,309) and Cambodians (6,535)."