KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 6 ― Indonesia has threatened legal action against a Malaysian company behind a controversial robotic vaccum cleaner advertisement deemed offensive to its migrant workers, unless it publishes its apology.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry Armanatha Nasir said the apology must be published in three local papers.

“We’ve sent a letter telling the company to make an apology in three different Malaysian newspapers of at least half a page.

“If they don’t do it in the next seven days, we’ll definitely take the next legal step,” the spokesman was quoted saying yesterday by The Jakarta Globe.

The row over the offensive advertisement that carries the line “fire your Indonesian maid” comes amid a three-day official visit by Indonesia President Joko Widodo to Malaysia.

Armanatha said the issue of the offensive advertisement would only crop up during “informal talks” and will not see a “special discussion” over the matter during the official visit that started yesterday.

In Widodo’s first bilateral trip since winning the presidential elections, the Indonesian leader and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak are reportedly expected to meet this morning to discuss trade, economic and security issues, including the treatment of Indonesian workers here.

On Wednesday, the Indonesian government said it delivered a protest note to the Malaysian Foreign Ministry to demand a ban on the advertisement by robotic vacuum supplier RoboVac Malaysia in both its physical and online forms.

An Indonesian organisation called Migrant Care also urged Joko to protest against the advertisement, which the country’s media has labelled as “racist” and “hurtful”.

But Corvan Technologies, the local distributor of the robotic vacuum cleaner here, denied that it was behind the advertisement and blamed an unauthorised dealer instead.

Yesterday, RoboVac Malaysia’s website was defaced and replaced with a black site and white text urging the company to “be nice” to Indonesian domestic workers. This is believed to be the work of Indonesian hackers.

Indonesian maids had formed nearly 90 per cent of the Malaysia’s domestic helpers before the 2009 moratorium here, but remain the most popular supplier of such workers to Malaysia due to similar language and other cultural habits.