Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah (PGRS) secretary-general Stephen Jimbangan said issuing another type of identification document would not resolve the perennial problem faced by illegal immigrants in the state.
“For example, what will happen to the newborn children of these immigrants later? Is the government going to issue them the PSS as well?
“If the purpose of the whole plan is to segregate genuine locals and the illegal immigrants, then issuing Sabah identity cards (ICs) to Sabahans is the only way.
“After all, this was promised by Warisan before and during the last general election,” he said, in a statement here today.
Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had previously announced the plan to issue the PSS, starting next June, to replace the IMM13 refugee document, Kad Burung-Burung and census certificate.
Currently, it is estimated that about 600,000 people are carrying these three types of documents, out of about 1.1 million foreigners residing in Sabah.
Chief Minister Shafie Apdal had told the state assembly last month that 136,065 holders of these documents in Sabah were eligible to apply for the PSS.
This figure is based on records from the state Immigration Department, Chief Minister’s Department and Sabah National Security Council, dating from Nov 26, 2015 to June 15, 2016.
Shafie said previous estimates of 600,000 included the dependents of these document holders.
Regarding Deputy Home Minister Azis Jamman’s explanation about the PSS in the Dewan Negara recently, Jimbangan said Azis was trying too hard to justify the implementation of the PSS programme.
He said even if the previous government had initiated the idea of the PSS, as claimed by Azis, the government of the day was duty-bound to improve or come up with better policies to tackle the huge presence of undocumented migrants in Sabah.
“And not just by copying the previous government’s proposals or just renaming them,” he said.
Azis is embroiled in an argument with Parti Bersatu Sabah after he claimed the PSS was part of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Illegal Immigrants in Sabah previously.
PBS leaders, including its former president Joseph Pairin Kitingan, have denied this claim, saying Azis had fabricated the matter.
Meanwhile, Jimbangan said amnesty programmes should be offered to the holders of these documents for them to obtain proper passports from their countries of origin. They should return home and only come back with work permits if they wanted to find jobs in Malaysia.
“This way, we do not need to issue up to 600,000 of these so-called PSS in Sabah.
“PGRS urges the federal government to implement a long-term solution in protecting our borders from continuous intrusions,” he said.
One way to solve this illegal immigrants issue, he said, was for the Malaysian government to consider investing in southern Philippines to create job opportunities.
“We can impose a condition that stateless children in Sabah must return there,” he said.