The government is appealing for help from employers to end the reliance on legal and illegal foreign workers in the country, where numbers have topped three million.

immigrant workers exodusThe move comes after a decision earlier this year to send home up to 500,000 legal foreign workers by 2009 in a bid to force employers to hire locals.

"We want the demand for foreigners totally scrapped, that is our aim," home minister Syed Hamid Albar told the Star daily.

"We need cooperation from those who are seeking workers," he added, saying there were three million foreign workers in Malaysia.

Our biggest problems

Syed Hamid said illegal workers were one of the biggest problems the ministry was facing.

"We need a collective and planned effort from all quarters... to ensure that we only depend on our own citizens," he told the daily.

The government has already announced a ban on foreigners working in frontline roles in hotels and airports.

However, the plan to reduce imported labour has been criticised as unplanned, disastrous for industries that depend on it, and insulting to the countries where the workers come from.

The vast majority of foreign workers in Malaysia are employed in manufacturing and agriculture as well as in domestic work.