Home minister Hamzah Zainudin said he met with Sabah officials today and agreed that “everyone living in Sabah” must have an identity card or similar documents.

“The problem in Sabah is that some of the foreign nationals have been staying there for 30 years, some for two or three generations,” he said after the meeting in Putrajaya.

“If we want to send them back to their countries of origin, they would not remember their families or their villages.”

Hamzah said the identity cards would allow foreign nationals to work in Malaysia legally and their children to have access to social services such as education.

He said the government planned to roll out the cards in three months’ time, but was unsure how many would be issued as the latest data needed to be collated.

Asked why the government wanted to issue the cards so soon, he said: “Why not? If it were up to me, it would have been done yesterday.

“This card is not a citizenship certificate but merely an acknowledgement that they are foreigners living in our country.”

He said the card was only meant for migrants who had been residing in Sabah for a long period of time and not for undocumented persons who had just entered the state.

Hamzah said cooperation from everyone in Sabah, including politicians and community leaders, was crucial for the initiative to work.

“The political will must be there. It is important that everyone in our country have identification documents. Although we don’t know which country they are from, we will know they are not Malaysians.

“We don’t want to ignore this problem because doing so may make it more difficult to solve in the future,” he said.

We are live on Telegram, subscribe here for breaking news and the latest announcements.