Published: Friday November 19, 2010 MYT 8:36:00 PM
Malaysia no longer base for human trafficking, says MOF
By DHARMENDER SINGH
PUTRAJAYA: Heightened enforcement against human trafficking and people smuggling has forced syndicates to shift their base outside Malaysia, said Marine Operations Force (MOF) commander Senior Asst Comm Datuk Isa Munir. SAC Isa said Malaysia was no longer considered a safe place for the syndicates to move people arriving on small vessels to bigger ships before being transported to countries like Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada.
He said Malaysia was still being used as a transit point but most of the cases now involved moving a few people at a time in smaller boats and not large vessels with long distance travel capabilities. “From the intelligence we received up to last month, the syndicates have moved to neighbouring countries using places like Phuket as their base,” he said during a media briefing at the Home Ministry here Friday.
SAC Isa said this did not mean that enforcement agencies like the MOF and the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency would let their guard down. “To allow us to better monitor the long coastline, we have submitted a proposal for more police stations as well as sub-stations and the setting up of mobile sub-stations operating from boats,” he said. SAC Isa said he had recently made a request to Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar for an additional 250 boats to allow the MOF to increase its enforcement and monitoring activities.
He said new boats were necessary as quite a number of the 223 boats in its current fleet were between 30 and 50 years old. On smuggling activities, SAC Isa said the number of arrests and fines for such cases fell to 2,907 as of October this year compared to 3,741 for the whole of last year. The value of the items seized and fines collected amounted to RM18mil as of October this year compared to RM34mil for the whole of last year.
