Malaysia dumps 43 Indian immigrants in detention camp

Forty three Indians have been languishing in a Malaysian detention camp for nearly two months after a recruiting agency made them work in factories there "illegally" for around five months, media reports said.

Reports quoted Malaysian Trades Union Congress officials as saying that the manpower outsourcing agency, which brought them into the country, had also extracted over Malaysian ringit 10,000 (Rs1.2 lakh) each as repatriation fee while at the camp in Pekan Nenas, Johor.

MTUC said no action has so far been taken against the manpower outsourcing agency based in Johor, which brought the 43 Indians into the country.

The 43 and eight others - aged between 23 and 35 years - had been hired as general workers for factories in Johor on a three-year contract. On January 17, the cheated workers took a bus from Johor to Kuala Lumpur to seek help from the Indian High Commission but were rounded up by police on the way there.