Shafie said this would ensure the welfare of the Bajau Laut community while reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign labourers.
The Warisan president said this would help ease the acute issue of undocumented migrants in Sabah.
“The (Bajau Laut) seafarers are stateless people without a legal status. Their children cannot receive basic education. They also have no access to healthcare services, despite existing (within our borders for generations).
“If we can provide them a document similar to the PSS – not a MyKad – to formally recognise them, we can tap into this community as workers.
“Why should we recruit workers from Bangladesh, Nepal and other countries when we have people in our own country that we can’t make use of as part of the labour force?” he said on the latest episode of the Keluar Sekejap podcast.
In September 2019, the federal home ministry and the Shafie-led Sabah government decided to issue the PSS to 136,055 foreigners in the state to replace their IMM13, Surat Burung-Burung and Census Certificate.
These foreigners are largely Filipino refugees who fled the unrest in the southern Philippines in the 1970s, and have been staying in Sabah for four generations.
The plan was scrapped in January 2020 after Warisan lost the Kimanis by-election to Barisan Nasional, with Shafie acknowledging then that Sabahans were against the PSS.
Meanwhile, Shafie said incorporating the Bajau Laut into the workforce would benefit the economy, since they would be paying taxes and have greater spending power upon earning an income.
“Foreign labourers would only send our money back to their home country,” he added.
However, Shafie said any document issued to the Bajau Laut must explicitly state that its holders were not citizens, so as to assuage locals’ concerns about potential naturalisation.
The Semporna MP, who is also the state opposition leader, said he would support Sabah deputy chief minister Jeffrey Kitingan’s efforts in providing documentation for the Bajau Laut.
In June, the plight of the Bajau Laut came to the spotlight after 138 illegal settlements set up by the community were torn down by a Sabah government agency.
The Bajau Laut, often called sea gypsies, are a nomadic maritime community native to the water and shores of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.