Keningau: Of the thousands of illegal immigrants detected in the Keningau-Tenom districts, only a handful were caught during the recent four-day large scale operation by Special Task Force (STF) personnel.
The operation, from Aug. 13 16, involved some 100 personnel concentrating on plantations, contract workers, factories, coffee shops and supermarkets.
An STF officer declined to offer comments, saying that only the STF Director or the Chief Minister, was empowered to disclose the exact number of foreigners caught.
With the number of illegals rounded up not to expectations, some observers believe they had been warned of an imminent operation would be carried out in the Interior Division, beginning Aug 13.
This might have prompted the aliens to seek shelter in the surrounding jungles to escape arrest. Most of them were noted to have stocked up food supplies before disappearing into the jungles, the observers said.
The dragnet also covered Tenom, Nabawan, Tambunan, Keningau and the sub-districts of Kemabong, Pagalungan and Sook.
Obviously, the fugitives would only emerged from their hiding places when the coast is clear, especially when the STF personnel ended their operation on Friday, before returning to Kota Kinabalu.
A mini bus operator Abdullah (not his real name) said he stopped by the fringe of the jungle near the Pegalan bridge on Aug. 14, for feared of being intercepted by the STF personnel operating along the stretch leading to the Keningau township. Furthermore, his vehicle road tax had expired.
As he was about to ease himself, he noticed some children, believed to be foreigners, hiding in the nearby bushes. They ran off when he called out to them, only to realise that several foreigners had made temporary dwellings in the nearby jungles.
Farmers claimed they were hard-hit by the operation, especially when the illegal immigrants hiding in the jungle were foraging on their agricultural produce, such as vegetables, maize, pineapples and fruits.
Meanwhile, a random survey showed that the influx of illegal immigrants into the district was prompted by the readiness of the local employers to hire them as cheap labour, with the "recruiting agents" reaping the profits.
The foreigners were more than prepared to accept the daily wages of RM8-RM10, compared to the currency in their countries of origin, such as the Philippines and Indonesia.
