Hajiji said the state government will always protect the safety and interests of Sabahans.
“As such, the government does not plan to issue identity cards (MyKads) or citizenship to vaccine recipients comprising illegal immigrants,” he said, during the question and answer session at the Sabah state assembly today.
“However, the state government will consider this for the Orang Asal (indigenous people) who have yet to possess personal identification documents.”
He was responding to a question by Kadamaian assemblyman Ewon Benedick who had asked if the state government would consider the move based on previous news reports quoting the home ministry.
The question was initially addressed to state community development and people’s well-being minister Shahelmey Yahya.
Deputy home minister Ismail Mohamed Said had told the Dewan Rakyat previously that the ministry will consider giving identity cards or citizenship to those without personal identification, who receive the vaccine in Sabah and Sarawak, if they fulfilled the necessary criteria.
Meanwhile, Shahelmey had earlier said that according to the statistics department, as of 2020, 1,094,145 out of the 3,908,500 people in the state were non-citizens.
However, he added that he did not have the exact numbers of non-citizens who had come out to be vaccinated in Sabah but that the authorities had only obtained their names for record-keeping.
According to Shahelmy, of the 2,758,400 adults in the state, 1,614,771, or 59.4%, have completed their vaccination as at Sept 21 while 1,959,277, or 72.1%, have received at least one shot of the vaccine.
Shahelmey said the state government also started the vaccination process for the 426,200 teenagers, aged 12 to 17, in Sabah on Sept 16.
“As at Sept 21, 144,248 teenagers have received one dose of the Pfizer vaccine.”
On the slow vaccination rate in the state, he said there were several factors contributing to this such as the low registration rate involving residents aged 60 and above in the MySejahtera system at the start of Phase 2 of the vaccination programme.
Another factor was the limited vaccine supply to Sabah before mid-July.
Shahelmey said the state is working hard to increase the vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity by the end of October.
“As at Sept 20, Sabah has received 5,042,310 doses of vaccines under the national Covid-19 immunisation programme,” he said, adding more than three million of this comprises Pfizer vaccines.
“The state is expecting to receive another 2.89 million doses this month.”