A plan to confine some 2.8 million foreign workers to their ramshackle living quarters, on the grounds of curbing rising crime, has caused uproar with critics slamming it as modern day slavery.

Foreign workers, opposition lawmakers, trade union officials and human rights activists have come together to denounce the plan, to be tabled in parliament in March, as indecent discrimination against vulnerable migrant workers and a violation of international labour rules and codes.

''The plan discriminates and promotes prejudice against migrant workersit is unbelievable," said Irene Fernandez, executive director of 'Tenaganita', an NGO helping migrant workers. ''These measures are against international labour rules and codes.''

The measures are said to be part of a major shift in 'managing' foreign workers from the human resources ministry to the home affairs ministry which, some critics say, automatically categorises migrant workers as a security problem.

Also, under the proposed legislation many functions of the human resources, tourism and health ministries will come under home affairs that oversees police, international security and the People's Volunteer Corps or 'Rela' that is now gunning for some 800,000 undocumented migrant workers in the country.