Sabah IC not solution to migrant problem, says Warisan veep

 

Many people in Sabah do not have proper identification documents and are frequently rounded up by the authorities. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: The proposal to issue an identity card to Sabahans is not a solution to address suspicious identification documents, says Warisan vice-president Jaujan Sambakong.

Jaujan said the role of the native courts should be enhanced instead to verify the origin of applicants for citizenship.

“Sabah is part of Malaysia and issuing its own identity cards for Sabahans is not the real solution,” the Daily Express quoted him as saying yesterday.

“We should review the role of the native courts that can help in resolving issues by confirming the birth and origin of citizenship applicants.”

Jaujan Sambakong.

Jaujan said the national registration department (JPN) and the native courts could work together on this matter.

He said ethnic groups in Sabah such as the Lundayeh, Murut and Dusun, especially those in remote regions, still did not have identification documents.

Many children of parents whose marriages were not registered in Sabah also did not have such documents.

“We should not complicate the process of issuing identification documents to Sabah children, who are clearly from Sabah. Instead, we should help issue them,” he said.

He said if this issue was made complicated, then it cannot be resolved and there would be an increase in the number of Sabahans without documents, causing it to become a national issue.

On March 22, former chief minister Yong Teck Lee had pushed for the state government to consider implementing a Sabah IC as a way forward to safeguard Sabahans’ citizenship status.

Yong told the state assembly the issuance of a Sabah IC would kickstart a gradual process to filter out dubious ICs issued to foreigners, such as through the infamous Projek IC, and address the state’s perennial undocumented migrants issue.

Kenny Chua.

Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR) vice-president Kenny Chua said priority should be given to the implementation of the proposed Sabah IC.

He said steps must be taken to resolve the decades-old problem of undocumented migrants in Sabah.

Chua said the Sabah IC would not only help separate Sabahans from foreigners but also weed out those holding dubious documents.

“The problem is that it’s hard to tell who is holding a genuine or false document. All this resulted from Projek IC that continues to haunt and hurt us. It has changed the demographics of our beloved state.

“What choice do we have other than wanting to issue our own Sabah IC to Sabahans? It is important that the issuing agency must be under the Sabah government,” he added in a statement. - FMT