Pakistani scourge in Sabah

PENAMPANG, December 9, 2012: Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) has expressed grave concern over the drastic increase in the number of Pakistani traders in the district, over the years.



Its Information Chief Chong Pit Fah fervently warned that their increasing presence in the district, if left unchecked, could pose a serious threat to the socio-economic wellbeing of the local residents.



"As it is, the business of the local tuck shop operators have been badly affected since these Pakistani traders started to come into Penampang District, in the last few years, to set up their tuck shops in almost every nook and corner of the district right up to the Putatan sub-district," he lamented.



Speaking to reporters after lodging a police report at the District Police Station here today, Chong who is also SAPP Kepayan chief claimed that a recent random survey carried out by its Kepayan youth wing found that there were more than 20 tuck shops that are operated by the Pakistanis in the district. The said survey was prompted by public concern over the increasing number of Pakistani traders in the district, following the brutal murder of Norikoh Saliwa, the 16-year-old student in Kota Marudu, in which a suspect who is a Pakistani furniture shop manager has been detained by the police subsequently. 

"Hence, SAPP felt compelled to lodge a police report today, to urge the police as well as the Immigration Department to conduct a thorough check on these Pakistani traders who are operating the tuck shops in Penampang District. We strongly believed they could be abusing their social visit pass, or even having secured their stay and permit to do business through such dubious means like "marriage of convenience" with the rural native women, some who are the single mothers," he said.



He claimed to have received numerous feedbacks from those who had dealings with these Pakistani traders that many of them (Pakistani traders) are preying for the rural young native girls, with the intention of marrying them so that their native wives could later act as their guarantor for them to secure a longer stay in the state, as well as to apply for trading licences to conduct their businesses.



It was reliably learnt that many of these Pakistan nationals had entered Sabah from Kuala Lumpur via Labuan.



"The major concern among the native community in Sabah now is that some of these Pakistani traders had returned to their wife and children back in Pakistan, for good, thus leaving behind their native wife and children here," he lamented.



He further claimed that the district of Kota Marudu is especially infested with Pakistani nationals, so much so that it has been dubbed as the 'mini Karachi'.



Chong who was a former Deputy Chairman of the Penampang District Council and a well-known grass root leader in Penampang who knew the district very well, also wondered whether the increasing presence of the number of Pakistani traders in the district is yet another government-sanctioned tacit scheme specifically designed to alter the demographics of Sabah, Penampang District in particular, in order to produce a 'favourable outcome' for the present administration in the coming General Election, which is just around the corner.



He also questioned the justifications for the relevant authorities to allow such a huge number of Pakistani nationals to continue to come in to Sabah unabated.



"We know for a fact that the Filipino and the Indonesian workers are here because they are needed by the plantation and construction industries. But as for the Pakistanis, what have they contributed to Sabah? To help increase the population of Sabah and to ensure a perpetual rule by the Barisan Nasional?" he questioned.



He also claimed that many people have alluded the drastic increase of the Pakistanis in the state over the years, to the a senior Sabahan politician who is partially from the same ethnicity.



Accompanying Chong at the police station were Aloysius Danim Siap Ketua CLC Moyog ,Francis Mojikon setiausaha CLC Moyog , Benjamin Siowou Naib ketua CLC , Alexander Masabal Naib Ketua, Martina Libasa Ketua Wanita, Walter Balanjiu Ketua penerangan,Chips Hilary Ahmung Tim Ketua Penerangan, Foo Si Chin Naib Ketua CLC Kepayan, Ketua pemuda Lim Kat Chung , And others AJK CLC kepayan Members .