Crackdown sees illegal workers playing desperate waiting game

'It is only a matter of time before police jail us ... we will be whipped, deported'

The clock is relentlessly ticking away for Alagapillai Perumal, 27, from Chennai, India, who entered Malaysia on a two-week tourist visa in March, destroyed his passport and commenced work, illegally, as a cook.

'I am so afraid I can't sleep ... I fear the midnight knock on the door,' said Mr Perumal, who lives with 18 other Indian workers in a small room two floors above the restaurant in the Brickfields suburb of Kuala Lumpur.

'It is only a matter of time before police arrest and jail us ... we will be whipped and deported,' he said while making tosai, a favourite Indian breakfast made of ground rice. 'We can only pray we are not caught.'

On Wednesday night, in a scene that will be played out time and again in coming months, 14 Nepali security guards working for small Malaysian companies were nabbed by police.

Malaysia has started a crackdown on the army of illegal foreign labourers who do much of the donkey work.

The country's population of 24 million includes 1.3 million registered foreign workers, according to the Ministry of Manpower and Human Resources. Various government estimates put the number of illegals at between 1.2 million and 2 million.