Govt to review policy involving foreigners in country - Hamzah

 

The Home Ministry will review and issue a policy involving foreigners to resolve problems that impact local communities, said its minister Hamzah Zainudin.

He said the ministry will discuss with all relevant parties including the Immigration Department, Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM), and the National Registration Department on what should be highlighted in the policy.

“There are many complaints from the community here related to foreigners. For example, a housing unit has three rooms that accommodate three families. This causes noise problems.

“Besides that, there are also complaints from locals saying these foreigners are involved with drugs,” he said.

He was speaking to reporters after visiting two locations in Bukit Mertajam, Penang today, where the Immigration Department inspected nearly 100 foreigners, including United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cardholders.

Commenting on the UNHCR's willingness to share details of its cardholders only on the assurance that the refugees will not be arrested, Hamzah said: “It's good that they want to share. But if you (UNHCR) set a condition, you are actually not sincere."

“UNHCR issued the card to them but there is no enforcement. If the card has expired and they (refugees) are still residing here, we do not know how to locate them because UNHCR did not share any details with us,” he said.

Hamzah said the matter could be resolved in a more orderly manner if there is a policy and so that any disagreements could then be avoided.

When asked if the government is ready to consider the use of refugee camps, Hamzah said: “That is one of the suggestions, but I am not so sure what kind of refugee camps because we need to look at the reality, location, infrastructure. All these need to be taken into account."

Last week, the Home Ministry asked the UNHCR for data on its cardholders so that they could be included in the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

At present, there are 178,715 UNHCR cardholders, but there is no further information on where they are located.

- Bernama